


The B-Team

by twistedingenue



Series: The B-Team [1]
Category: Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Reality, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bechdel Test Pass, Canon-Typical Violence, Complete, F/M, Gen, Past Relationship(s), Women Being Awesome, the one where everyone you love is dead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-16
Updated: 2013-05-26
Packaged: 2017-11-29 12:09:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 40,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/686799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twistedingenue/pseuds/twistedingenue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alternate Universes are rarely better than your own. This one is no exception. Clint and Natasha find themselves in a universe where the Avengers don't exist, SHIELD is holding on by the barest thread, and the only people able to keep things together are a very different group of unlikely heroes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

                                       

 

    "A headlamp, Barton? Really?" Natasha whispers as they meet back together in the recently abandoned warehouse.  
    
   "This place does not meet OSHA standards. The Minion Union apparently does not have a lot of pull these days." He talks normally, because there's no one here, and Natasha is just a sucker for formality. "I don't think that what we're going to find anything. Place looks pretty much out of stock."  
  
   There's only a fine layer of dust on the shelving, this place was being used just a couple of days ago. They are too late to confiscate the weapons being run through here, but Bruce had caught an energy signature that warranted investigation. And retrieval. In Madripoor. Sneaking is not on anyone else’s list of highly exercised skillsets, so here they are.  
    
   “Do we still have the signal?” Natasha says into her earpiece.  
  
   “That’s a positive, Widow,” Coulson answers in his steady working voice after a few moments. “Reading the signal is in your immediate vicinity.”  
  
   Clint moves his head around, scanning the last room methodically, floor to ceiling. “I’m not seeing anything here that could produce.” He stops his head and then slowly moves it over the patch of floor again. “Hold on, I think we’ve got a trapdoor.”  
  
   Natasha bends over and knocks on the floorboard, a succession of hollow rapping, and she looks back up at him through her eyelashes and an impish grin. “Floor safe. Pull up the floorboards.” It takes a little improvising with discarded materials from around the warehouse, but they get the boards up and look at the safe.  
  
   “It’s really deep in there, sir.” Clint lays down on the floor, and brushes off the dirt. “We’re not going to be able to pull It out in our timeframe. We’re going to have to open it.”  
  
   “Understand Barton.  What information do you have on the safe?” Clint reads off what he can of the manufacturer information and what is left of the model number. It’s not exactly the world’s most foolproof safe. With the right tools, either of them could have it open in minutes.  
  
   “I wish I hadn’t left my plasma cutter at home.” He laments and groans when he sees that much of the model number was filed off.  
  
   “We will work with that, Hawkeye.”  
  
   As they wait, Clint imagines the scurrying of the junior agents, finding the factory combinations, finding the best way to get into this specific safe, Coulson waiting for them with contained energy.  
  
   “Let’s try the factory settings, Hawkeye.” Coulson gives the combination, feeds it into Clint’s ears. Shaking his head, because really, what sort of supervillains keep the standard settings for their top secret…the lock clicks open. Apparently, this sort of idiot does that. Natasha leans over as well.  
  
   “Ladies first.” He gestures to Natasha before drawing back his hands to the lever, resting one there, “Except I don’t see any ladies here, do you?” He opens the safe door, while grinning at his partner, and her body tenses and her eyebrow juts up and he hears what she heard first, clicking at regular intervals.  
  
   “Shit—” he starts, and Coulson is talking loudly in her ears, voice rushed and expectant, but there’s not time for words before the light that started in the safe engulfs the warehouse.

* * *

  
  
   The warehouse is suspiciously not exploded when the light subsides. The warehouse is even more suspiciously not abandoned. Empty, yes, but not abandoned and it’s even OSHA compliant, if the lights weren’t half burned out. Natasha is talking into her headset until she cuts off suddenly.  
  
   “Coulson, do you copy?” Her eyebrow raises and when there is no response she repeats a little more urgently, “Coulson, do you copy?”  
  
   “EMP?” Clint suggests. He takes off the headlamp and turns it on and off. It’s working perfectly, as are some of the more high tech doodads that he and Natasha carry. “An effect of the signal we were following?”  
  
   Natasha cocks her head to the side, and her finger goes to her lips. After a moment, she motions for him to follow, pulling out her pistols as she goes into sneak mode and doesn’t make a noise as she guides him down a hallways, the sound of tapping growing louder.  
  
   “Have I ever mentioned how much I hate Madripoor?” A bitter female voice asks in a hushed tone. “Every time we’re dropped off here, we always end up getting shot at.”  
  
   “We haven’t been shot at yet, don’t jinx us,” another woman’s voice answers.  “And we have backup this time. Get the info and we can call for rescue.” The first woman lets out a huff and keeps up a steady stream of chatter about idiot servers and firewalls. “Wait, shut up.”  
  
   Clint and Natasha exchange a look, because they’ve heard these voices before, just on the edge of familiarity. They split to either side of the hall, and he nocks an arrow as they slide against the wall to where the hallway turns into an open space with a bank of computers. The two women are at one of the computers, the taller typing away at both the terminal and working with a hacking kit.  
  
   “Someone’s on my tail,” she says. “Fucker. Come on baby, I just need a few things, give it up.”  
  
   The combination of her voice and seeing her, really seeing both of them, slams the realization of who they are into focus, and it does not make sense. He trips over his feet on his next step and the smaller, slighter woman looks up and hoists up an assault rifle into a ready stance, scanning the room and pin pointing exactly where Clint is standing. Even Natasha, usually so steady and unshockable on missions blinks a few times in recognition and surprise.  
  
   Jane Foster is aiming a nasty looking rifle straight at his head. Jane Foster.  
  
   “Uh, hello?” He waves a free hand while, Darcy, fucking Darcy lets out a litany of curses as she glances over before she types faster. “Jane. Darcy. It’s Clint and Natasha. You can put down the gun.”  
    
   There isn’t a single look of recognition on either of their faces. They were at the Tower just last week, visiting Thor from New Mexico. Darcy went shopping with Natasha, while Jane and Thor went…well, into their bedroom for a whole day, but the point stands, they all know each other. And yet, nothing. Something is wrong here.  
  
   “I hate Madripoor.” Darcy pinches her face as she concentrates on the screen. Every time he’s met her before, she’s worn sweaters and leggings and boots, but here it’s SHIELD issued BDU pants and tank top, her hair pulled tightly away from her face. She’s turned to the side from them, and he can see she has a jagged scar on her shoulder and  her own rifle slung against her back. Jane is dressed in a similar fashion, though her shirt has sleeves.  
  
   Jane raises a hand to her ear. “Hey, we confirmed that the building was empty before we got in, right? So, then why am staring at two people with, wait, is that a bow and arrow?”  
  
   “They don’t know who we are.” Natasha says slowly, lowering her gun. “I think we’ve wandered into something new.”  
  
   “Got it!” Darcy pumps her arm and starts unplugging her gear. “So, who are we shooting?”  
  
   “We aren’t shooting anyone that isn’t shooting us.” Jane purses her lips, “Are you shooting us?”  
  
   “No.” Clint confirms, taking his arrow off the string and back into the quiver. The bow itself is still a weapon and he feels very secure about that. “Is there someplace we can go to talk?”  
  
   Darcy’s eyes dart over and she leans over to whisper to Jane. A flurry of eyebrows and hand gestures (mostly from Darcy as Jane hasn’t lowered her gun yet) and an entire calculus of things he doesn’t know that have between them later and Jane answers. “Yes. But we will need to wait for rescue, since you two are not going to blend in on the streets outside.”  
  
   “You have to be rescued?” It’s a strange thought, because the situation isn’t dire. No one’s shooting, this warehouse is far more compliant with local health and safety laws (does Madripoor even have health and safety laws?) and while yeah, he can admit that they’d cut a strange picture outside, it’s hardly unusual for this place for black-clad armed men and women to be out on the streets.  
  
   “Are you new?” Darcy stutters, “Not a verb, a noun. Proper. RESCUE. Where are you from where you haven’t heard of RESCUE?”  
  
   “Darcy,” Jane says quickly, lowering her gun and staring at Clint’s uniform, at the SHIELD emblem on his chest. “I don’t think they are from here at all.” Darcy looks dubious, but Jane presses on, “When was the last time you saw a SHIELD patch attached to anyone living? I think we’ve got something weird going on, not a shooting weird, just a weird thing.”  
  
   That is not a good sign at all.

* * *

  
   Darcy and Jane take them to the roof, and Darcy keeps an eye on the sky, telling Clint and Natasha that RESCUE was only a few minutes out and waiting for their call. They are all holding each other at an arms length, not really sure how much to divulge to each other. Jane’s pretty sure that they’ve arrived here from something like an alternate universe.  
    
   “I don’t understand.” Engineering, he gets. He can follow plans and schematics, even the higher level math if it’s set to some practical use. This? He does not get.  
    
   Jane rummages in a pocket for a small pad of paper and a pen and starts scribbling, “It works better this way, even if it’s inaccurate.” She shows him a line, “Say this is our universe,” she draws lines coming off of the main line. “Every time that there a choice or decision that’s not made, there become another reality where it was made. So there’s an infinite amount out there.”     
  
   She doesn’t even look like this is phasing her at all. God Bless Jane Foster’s capacity for accepting the strange in life, otherwise this would have ended in bloodshed.  
  
   “So, you think that’s what happened? That that energy signature we encountered took us to another reality, universe…whatever?” he asks Natasha. Madripool below them is a loud and thriving city, not all that different from the city they entered earlier in the day. It seems unreal to think they’ve ended up somewhere else in literally a flash of light.  
  
   “I am reserving judgement, but I do not see it likely that we would have come across these two here in any other circumstance.” The sound of repulser guided flight causes them both to look up. They expect a suit, of course, but it’s obvious that this isn’t Iron Man, it’s not Stark. The suit is smaller, although similarly colored.  
  
   “Did we end up in the universe where Stark’s a girl?” He tilts his head as RESCUE lands, and Natasha smirks, and she likes that thought very much, the idea playing all over her face.  
  
   Darcy and Jane circle around RESCUE and talk together. There’s pointing, there’s laughing and then there’s serious expressions and he can just make out that they are working out logistics.  
  
   “Right, we’ll go to the Malibu Mansion for staging. I don’t want them loose in the Tower quite yet.” RESCUE says, and again, it’s a voice on the edge of familiarity, and it doesn’t sound like a feminine version of Tony, the inflection and sarcasm is all wrong. She’s speaking with sincerity.  
  
   “Here’s the plan, with that,” Darcy points to his SHIELD emblem, “You’d be dead in minutes walking the streets. SHIELD personnel are shoot on sight here. Instead, she’s going to take you to where our ride is parked, and we will meet you there and we’re going to head back to the US. If you try anything, you are dead.”  
  
   Clint nods, looking at Natasha when he hears the the faceplate move, and Nat just reacts in surprise. She breaths in harshly and her eyes go wide, her smile smug and satisfied and he turns just to see who the woman in the suit is that cause cause that sort of losing it from his partner.  
  
   The woman has flushed pale skin and freckles, vivid blue eyes and just a bit of honey-red hair escaping from the edges of the helmet. It takes a moment to put all the pieces together because, holy fuck. RESCUE is Pepper fucking Potts.  
  
 


	2. Chapter 2

“So what do we call them?” Darcy asks Jane.  
  
“Clint and Natasha? That’s what they said their names were,” Jane replies with an eyeroll.  
They’ve stashed the new folk in the back of the jet, trying to keep them in the dark just a little bit longer. Just in case Jane is wrong (but Jane is hardly ever wrong outright) or if their arrival is the start of something new. Fuck it, they don’t need anything else clogging up their valves; they’ve got enough damn it.  
  
Pepper comes back from the cockpit, Happy has held up to his name since he’s been taught how to fly. He’d be useless in a fight, but if it came down to that, they’d probably have a bigger problem than an inexperienced pilot. Right now, having someone they trust and someone that is brave is far more important than skill. Which has been pretty much been their motto for the past two years.  
  
“The bigger question is what do we want to do with them. Are they friendly?” Pepper stands awkwardly in her armor, like she can’t wait to get back to the mansion and get it off. She’s still not comfortable in it, there’s parts that ride up, chafe and break the skin and she bears through It all. “Or at least competent?”  
  
“They know who we are, or at least who we are in their reality. They wear SHIELD gear and standard arms. If they come from a reality anything like ours, that could be a good thing.” Jane puts a hand through her hair, strands pulling out. She’s not eating enough again and working all hours, “I don’t see any way we could get them back to where they belong. That’s so far beyond me, I don’t even know where to start.”  
  
Darcy rubs at her eyes. “Well, then okay, we’re stuck with them then at least until we can figure out if they are useful. A bow? Seriously?” She’s going to have to check the databases when they get back to Malibu. If they were SHIELD in their home, maybe they are here too. But she knows every surviving member of SHIELD by sight, whether they’ve met or not and they don’t look familiar at all.  
  
Well, okay, the people don’t look familiar but something about Clint’s gear is tickling the back edges of her memory; she just can’t place from where. It’s probably just a RenFair she went to or something.  
  
“But you got the list?” Pepper holds out her hand and Darcy pulls out her hacking gear, the hard drive everything was downloaded to. “You didn’t make it easy, did you?”  
  
“Apparently, criminal organizations don’t keep handy lists of who they are contracting to kill people available on their servers. But I should be able to sort through and find connections and make a list.”  
  
“Do you need help with that? I can sit and scroll as well as you.” Jane offers but Pepper cuts her off, saying that no, she needs a little practical engineering. “Pep, I…” she starts but it’s old hat. They don’t have anyone better qualified to do the touch ups on the suit, and Jane’s at least decent with it. Would it have killed Tony to leave an owners manual?  
  
Well, hey there dark humor, welcome back, Because if he had left an owners manual then maybe Pepper would have — it doesn’t do well to dwell now, does it. He’s gone, and that’s that.  
  
“Okay, then we’ve got tomorrow’s agenda wrapped up. We just, what are we going to do with them,”  Jane says, waving her hand to the back compartment, and they all just look over, tired and not sure how to proceed.

  
She can tell that they are moving pretty fast, but they’ve been confined to a small compartment in what seems to be a very modified version of Stark’s corporate jet. Not a stripper pole in sight. The seats are comfortable and no one is being tortured, and Clint is even taking the opportunity to take a nap.  Natasha looks up when the door opens to reveal Pepper, helmet completely off now.  
  
“I hope you don’t mind, I can’t stay still on flights when I can’t take the armor off.” She says, trying to throw them off guard, of course, with her sincerity and professionalism. But Natasha doesn’t have anything to hide here, what can she? If she’s truly in another reality, then she’s only got her physical self as leverage and not any information. And other than separating the groups from each other, the women haven’t done anything to them. Well, and threatening, but it’s hard to take threats from Jane and Darcy seriously still, as competent as they look with firepower.  
  
If they ever get home, it’ll be something to tell Thor. He’ll get a kick out of it.  
  
“Not at all.” But there’s a perk; they don’t know who she is yet, which means they don’t know to examine everything she says. “I’d offer a seat, but…”  
  
“Sitting isn’t exactly comfortable,” Pepper acknowledges. “Who am I where you are from?”  
Natasha considers her answer and settles on the truth, slips a little into Natalie, because Pepper mostly like Natalie. “CEO of Stark Industries, Tony Stark’s girlfriend —although neither of you like that phrasing. You’re a friend to both of us.”  
  
She looks over at Clint, who is now only pretending to sleep. His breathing is different, and he’s less relaxed. Natasha can focus on what Pepper is conveying, rather than what she’s saying.  
  
Pepper looks down and away, a sad smile on her face. “At least he’s alive somewhere. My Tony died a year ago during a confrontation with AIM.”  
  
“He’s always counted on you in any universe to pick up his slack,” Natasha quietly jokes, not sure how Pepper would take it.  
  
“The bastard,” Pepper jokes, bringing her head up. So that’s how it is here, no use dwelling, pick yourself up and go. “How do you know us? Through SHIELD?”  
  
“I was sent to evaluate Tony for a SHIELD project.” She watches Pepper and there’s no recognition there. Interesting. “I was an undercover agent posing as your assistant. We became close and stayed that way after I revealed myself.” The best lies are always the truth.  
  
Pepper changes direction and pulls herself up in ways that she’s never seen Tony be able to do in one of his suits. RESCUE really is beautiful, articulated in slightly different ways, made from the ground up for Pepper and the ways she moves.  “I’m betting you are familiar with the mansion in Malibu, then. We’ll be there in an hour or so.” Pepper looks back at the door for a moment,  “JARVIS is already setting up rooms for both of you. Mints on the pillows, that sort of thing.”  
  
“Perhaps then you can tell us what happened to SHIELD?” Pepper likes bluntness. She gets, well got, enough of the roundabout from Tony fill that need, and she appreciates it when the point is found within a few words. This Pepper seems similar.  
  
Pepper’s lips thin as she presses them together, and silently blows air through them. “I’m sure it’ll probably come up.” And leaves through the same door and it locks once it closes again.  
  
Natasha lets a minute pass before she gets up and moves over to Clint’s side.   
  
He speaks in a low voice. “No Tony. No or much less SHIELD.”  
  
“No Avengers Initiative,” Natasha confirms. “Pepper’s never been that good at hiding that sort of thing. I don’t think it ever even existed here.”  
  
“So where did this reality go off track with ours?” Clint leans forward, his forearms resting on  his thighs and looking up. “Do we even want to know?”  
  
There’s not a good answer for that, neither truth nor lie, so she just holds his gaze.

  
They sleep for like, a good six hours, pretty much the longest they’ve slept in a year and it’s pretty much out of avoidance. But they’ve all gotten up and showered, and there’s a bot making a smoothie, so you know, life as normal in the Malibu Clubhouse.  
  
“JARVIS, I’m feeding the house some info, can you start some preliminary searches for me. References to SHIELD, freelancers, things like that. I’m also inputting some of our known names for cross-checking. Anything that comes up with them, we need.”  
  
“This will take some time Miss Lewis,” JARVIS responds. “I should also inform you that our guests are awake and a little agitated at being confined to their rooms.”  
  
“Define agitated?” Darcy goes for coffee, sweet, delicious coffee, with lots of sugar.  
  
“One has been attempting to find the heating ducts, but they are too small for him to pass through.”  
  
Darcy rolls her eyes. “Let them out, tell them where the kitchen is, let’s start the talking.”  
  
“Understood, Miss Lewis.”  
  
Dummy finishes the smoothie he was making. He makes a lot of smoothies now, like that’s how he’s still mourning for Tony. Or something; how exactly should one take a beloved AI through the mourning process. Is this bargaining? If I make smoothies for everyone to their tastes, will Sir come back?  
  
The first of their guests, the guy with the bow walks in first, like he knows the place. He’s taking in the differences, though, and some of the artwork has taken him by surprise. He’s wearing the same pants as the day before, no one had clothes that fit him around the hips, but they scrounged up an oversized shirt that fits him much tighter than it ever did on Tony. Natasha was much easier to find clothes for, a mix of all the women’s wardrobes were given to her.  
  
“Hey, muscles, Dummy’s taking smoothie orders, what do you want?” she asks, and Clint looks confused and looks over himself and then at the arm-bot.  
  
“Uh, yeah. Huh, I’m not used to being muscles from you.” He shakes his head and continues, “Whatever you are having, I guess. Make two, Nat should be out in a minute.”  
  
Dummy whirrs. It’s kind of adorable. What’s even more adorable is the way that Clint reaches out to touch, to pet Dummy like a pet. Shortly, the kitchen starts filling up with people, and breakfast is a relatively quiet affair.  
  
“Aww, Dummy, no, you don’t — can you please remember that I’m allergic to strawberries. Did he program you like this just to annoy me?” Pepper says, handing hers over to Jane, and Natasha stage whispers to Clint asking if Dummy is their robot butler and if they can have one.  
  
It almost feels normal. Right up until Jane breaks the ice by admitting, a little too loudly, “I don’t think I can get you home.” Jane hates admitting she can’t do something, but Clint and Natasha seem to take it in stride.  
  
“If they are able to get us back from our side, they will. If not, we will adapt.” Natasha raises her eyebrows at Clint, and her face is deceptively open. Darcy is pretty good at reading people now, that’s probably not her actual open and friendly face.  
  
“I want to put them in context.” Jane does not have an appropriate bone in her body. Christ woman, run them down with a car first at least. But Jane just looks at her and Darcy crosses her arms and pulls up one of the interface windows. Has she ever mentioned how much she loves this house? The Mansion and the Tower are the two best places ever.  
  
“JARVIS, run voiceprint authorization and access the SHIELD database.”  
  
Clint and Natasha exchange a worried and concerned set of facial contortions, “You have the SHIELD database linked here?”  
  
“It’s not so much linked as hosted,” Pepper says.  “We have the only copy.”  
  
“I think we’re going to need the whole story eventually.”  
  
“Maybe.” Pepper places her hands on her hips. Tall women, seriously, they make that position look authoritative rather than dumpy.  
  
JARVIS informs her that the database is prepped for search, and she prods Clint for his last name. Barton, he tells her, and she runs the search, runs the next for Natasha Romanov (variations Romanoff, Romanova, Rushman; she looks at Natasha, a little impressed. Russians, what ya going to do?). The search pulls up personnel files and she stretches her hand out to blow them up on the interface.  
  
SHIELD SPECIAL AGENT Barton, Clinton Francis, “Hawkeye”, Deceased.  
SHIELD SPECIAL AGENT Romanov, Natasha “Black Widow”, Deceased.  
  
“I told you that I remembered Budapest very differently,” Clint jokes to Natasha. “I don’t remember you dying.”  
  
“Neither do I. You didn’t make it much longer here either. Were you torn up about me?” Natasha is unnerving in the way she’s actually giddy about finding out about their counterparts deaths. “You were torn up. Aww, Hawkeye, you cared.”  
  
Darcy continues to scroll through their profiles, searching like she’s been taught, to read in between the lines for the unofficial stories and merits. These two had had the potential to be spectacular agents, both already skilled when they came to SHIELD, and they had just made them better. But they had only been working together for a year or so before Romanov was killed in action and then it must have been like all the air went out of Barton.  
  
Pepper walks the long way around, reading all the while too. Jane’s busying herself now with Dummy, doesn’t really care for remembering just how many dead SHIELD agents there are, how any surviving are being picked apart and taken out. Jane wants to stop it, but she’ll be overwhelmed if she stops to think about it. Pepper gives a long, slow nod, and Darcy knows she’s going to make the right choice.  
  
Judging by their skill sets, the nod did not go unnoticed, and Natasha speaks carefully. “Miss Lewis, just how did you three come into possession of the SHIELD databases?”  
  
Jane answers with a smile, always willing to needle at Darcy. “Oh, she had a thing with Agent Coulson.”  
  
“It was not a thing.” Darcy objects whipping her head around to look at Jane.  
  
“You had sex. Remember how I know this?” Jane crosses her arms in rebuttal, her mouth in a tight grin.  
  
Darcy turns again to look at Clint and Natasha, both trying to hide smiles and disbelief. “Only a few times! It wasn’t a thing.”  
  
Jane should not be allowed to stare with that level of intensity, even if it is playful and teasing, something she’s missed so much, but really, this isn’t something that she really lets out in the open because people look down on the woman that’s sleeping with someone that much older than her, and, okay she’s not ashamed but still, private lives! And anyways it totally had changed into something much different after they got it out of their systems. “Okay, so we had a thing, but it really wasn’t that sort of thing.”  
  
But now she remembers why Clint’s gear looked so familiar. Shadowboxes on the wall, next to Captain America displays, one with an old looking longbow but a high tech arrow and the other with a set of thick bracelets. She’d always figured that they were family heirlooms, or some sort of Cap thing that she didn’t know about, and he didn’t want to talk about any of those things when they could be talking about tactical advantages and high powered weaponry. She’s not even aware that her gaze has drifted to Barton’s shoulder, not really staring, but looking past him, her mouth open and drying out .  
  
She shakes her head and draws it back up, there’s time for that later. “I like older men.” There’s always something to redirect the conversation, always. “One would think you,” she pins Jane down by words; take that, bringing up the dead, “would have no place to talk about that.” Jane just slowly takes another drink, and probably only Darcy can see the resolve in her eyes.  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm updating tags and such as things are revealed and shown. I'm so pleased by the response so far. This is such a love labor and I'm enjoying every minute of it.


	3. Chapter 3

Jane, however, finishes her smoothie in one gulp. “Well, at least we got that taken care of. Darcy, all up to you now. I’ll be in the workshop if you need me.” She probably doesn’t mean to slam the glass down but she does. It’s heavy glass and doesn’t break, but a lesser glass would have.

Natasha jerks her chin, the question waiting in the air until Jane is out of earshot and Darcy responds without prompting. “Are either of you engineers or mechanics?” Natasha seems to communicate in small, precise gestures, without unnecessary movement, and its easy to tell she’s not inclined that way.

“Only in a very specific way. Not a slouch.” Clint’s sort of puffed up about that, but Darcy’s spent enough time around geniuses to know when someone is building themselves up a little higher than they are, “but not really anything to write home about.”

That’s unfortunate and she explains as much. Jane really dislikes having to do all of the repair work herself and Darcy and Pepper suck at it even more, so it comes does to her. Just her and the bots and the bots can’t blacksmith. Anyways, Pepper still has a company to run, meetings to lord over and rule, a board of directors to bend to her will, that sort of thing.

“I could try to see if I can at least assist,” Clint hedges, clearly not sure what he’s supposed to do. She takes a look at him, noticing that hey, he does have nice arms and could probably pound out dents at least as well as her favorite astrophysicist.

“Yeah sure,” she replies. “Hey JARVIS, get him to the shop, will you?” She turns to Natasha. “Looks like it’s you and me.”

* * *

It takes roughly five minutes for Clint to decide that this Jane is nothing like their Jane, except in all the ways they are exactly the same. Jane takes a singular look at him when he shows up offering to help and has him working on dents and such on the RESCUE armor.

This Jane works in silence, stripped down to a tank and tiny shorts, the bots barely able to keep up with her as she disassembles the armor methodically. The workshop is hot, but Jane is like fluid in the space, the heat keeping her steady and loose.

Schematics line the walls, blown up to various sizes, parts picks out in detail on permanent display. He can see RESCUE’s easily, a couple of Iron Man suits and a lot of what looks like War Machine. Jane doesn’t keep the music blaring classic rock, just keeps the temperature up and the sound of work, metal meeting metal, tiny suctioning vacuums and electrical equipment being the only background entertainment..

“You are staring,” she breaks the quiet between them, and oh shit, he was, that dent had been worked out a minute ago. “You should stop.”

Jane’s crouched down, one knee down and one knee up, stabilizing a light as she looks into hip plates. She’s got long limbs for a small woman, and they make her look delicate, she’s thinner too, he realizes before he looks away. “I’m sorry, I’m just…”

“Looking for the differences between us? You’ll drive yourself crazy doing that.” Jane pauses and puts down her tools before sitting flat on her ass. There’s a disconcerting challenge to her eyes that he’s really not used to seeing. “I’m sorry I can’t…that I’m not able to devote time to trying to get you home. It’s nothing personal. I spend all my time here if I’m not….” She groans, closing her eyes. “Look, you are going to keep looking for the differences between the us’s that you knew and well, us as we are here. But you need to remember that we aren’t them. We have entirely different experiences and different ways that we’ve been shaped.”  Jane shakes a little, drawing both her knees together. “Is she happy?”

This is clearly what’s been bugging Jane about them. It’s not that she doesn’t have all the information about him and Natasha; it’s the idea that there’s more of her running around somewhere. Doing research and there’s a very conspicuous absence of Thor here, and that does not bode well.

Actually, there’s a conspicuous absence of everyone here, and nature abhors a vacuum like that.

“Yes,” he admits. “She’s got a nice lab, a Darcy to boss around, and Thor keeps her remarkably grounded.”

She laughs, sad and hard. “That’s funny, because he was anything but grounded. I liked him, but he was an arrogant idiot too. I risked so much for him and he ends up dead. His friends claimed he was like them, strong and the best of all of fucking Asgard.” She looks up at Clint, and he knows he has an honest face, but she doesn’t seem the sort that just tells these things. She’s guarded and rough, and her thinness takes a different connotation. “But really, the best of all Asgard ended up bleeding out into the sand.”

There’s nothing he can say to that; nothing to apologize for; he’s dead here after all.

“How’d you beat the Destroyer then?” he asks and she looks grateful for the continuing conversation.

“It leveled the town, took Stark flying in to take it down. That’s how we met Pepper and how my life as as a fucking engineer got started. I swear, I haven’t done my own research in two years. First contracting to SHIELD while Darcy earned merit badges or something and now this…”

It’s all too clear that Jane’s life is not her own anymore.

        

* * *

“JARVIS, baby, remove all references to Petrov. He’s a no go. He is going nowhere.” Darcy wanders around the room, three giant screens processing information. Tony used the interface like a flight controller, but Darcy is more like a conductor, pulling out information and directing it to where it needs to go, expanding and diminishing strings of data.

“What are we looking for?” Natasha asks, trying to take in the information. The interface has never been as intuitive for her as it is for Tony or even for Pepper. She can use it, she understands it, but it’s not under her skin.

It is for Darcy, though and she pulls up and throws a screen over to Natasha. “You know that old canard about evil villains always losing because they always try to go it alone? That’s all it is, a story. Shortly after our little excursion in New Mexico,  five SHIELD installations were destroyed to the ground in coordinated attacks between HYDRA, AIM and several like-minded individuals and criminal rings. There are wonders that cooperation can achieve. SHIELD was scrambled for months, and the attacks continued, culminating in.… ” Darcy swallows down a hard lump. “By this point, there was really only the Helicarrier and a single science outpost left. The Helicarrier was lured out over open water and bombed, no survivors. We got this from a data raid a month ago.”

The screen in front of Natasha displays footage of fiery pieces of the ship falling from the sky. There are bodies too, frantic in freefall and hitting the water at speeds that would break bones and, if lucky, kill upon impact.

“We were the only ones who made it out of Tromso thanks to a well-timed pop-tart run, and we were left alone afterwards thanks to not being on the actual payroll. Now, the coalition of the fuckers is making move on the remaining teams, but they had less success, since SHIELD teams can slip into a population undetected quite easily. They’ve had to contract out to assassins for the dirty work of tracking them down.”

Darcy pulls a shifting slideshow of dossiers, some with pictures and some without, to the forefront. “SHIELD has maybe twenty teams still working, most in such deep cover that we don’t have any idea where they are, just information passed on through the background every so often. They range from two person handler/asset to ten person intelligence cells. We don’t have the resources to support them too much, but we’ve had three small teams come up KIA in the past month, all very long range sniper fire.”

Teams they can’t afford to lose, and if these women are the only way they are even functioning, then the way the Darcy is fierce every time she says the word we makes sense. She’s protective and grits out words with a narrow focus.

“Miss Lewis, there is an incoming call from Lieutenant Colonel Rhodes.” JARVIS announces.

“Well, might as well answer the phone.” Darcy grins, her hand exploding wide and pinning the call to the right of her, and turns her head to face it. “Rupert, my good sir.”

“How was Madripoor?” Rhodey responds with a good natured roll of his eyes. At least Darcy is continuing the tradition of needling James, although the middle name usage is new.

“You see one evil warehouse lair, you’ve seen them all. Hey, I didn’t get shot!” Darcy bounces on her toes and turns around in a circle. “See, all in one piece.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be somewhere? Like, meeting me here in New York?”

“Change of plans, we’re in Malibu.” Darcy smiles. “We picked up a couple of strays and we’re going to keep shop here for a little while.”

“And you didn’t think to let me know? I just got here from Eglin.” Rhodey complains.

“I’m fairly certain that you have aircraft at your disposal. Like, lots of them. Get to Malibu.” Rhodey starts to say something that sounds like strays, but Darcy interrupts, “Yes, strays, we can talk about them later. It’s something terribly complicated and I’m not going to deny Jane the pleasure of a good science rant. It’s her great joy in life.”

“Darcy….” Rhodey doesn’t stand a chance of this conversation ending with him getting a full sentence and Natasha watches as Darcy pinches her fingers together and ends the call.

She turns back to Natasha. “So that’s the last of our merry band. We don’t get War Machine in very often, but he’s the best when we need firepower.” Her eyebrows furrow and she pulls out and tilts a dossier to read closer. Natasha continues to be quiet, Darcy’s desperate to talk and just lets all this information roll out of her mouth.

A mouth like that could be very useful or could be very easy to break and send into a trembling wretch. Even relaxed around the projections, she holds herself with a coiled energy, like she’s trying to mimic another’s demeanor, but she can’t stop herself from showing through.

“So here’s my question to you. We’ve decided to trust you.” Darcy turns completely to look at Natasha, that energy perfectly filed into a sustainable curiosity, ready to move at a moments notice. “It might be premature, but you might be able to provide insights and skills that would never be able to get, and anything that can give us a leg up we are going to take. Why are you trusting us?”

Darcy doesn’t work like a scalpel in quick and surgical strikes; she’s blunt and will tear you apart. But Natasha does not have a tell and can hide back just a little. “Who says we have?”

“You’re wearing my shirt. You make jokes, although that could just be to disarm us a little, you aren’t fighting us. I haven’t met a SHIELD agent yet that didn’t want to test my mettle when we encounter them. You trust us, and I don’t think it’s just because we’re familiar faces.” Darcy crosses her arms and expects an answer and expects the truth.

 

Natasha smiles the way she does when she wants the other person to know she’s hiding something and blinks achingly slow. It unnerves the other woman just a little bit, but she holds herself together in a kind of stateliness, an imitation of another rather than her own grace.

 

“You didn’t try to comfort us and tell us you’d get us home. It would have been an easy lie. I wouldn’t have believed it, of course, but it would have been an understandable one.” Truth is nothing more than a commodity, something that when shared, is diminished. It tarnishes, it changes and becomes malleable. But these women are forthright anyways. They hold back, but everyone does. Just because you trust someone doesn’t mean that you want them to know every detail at any given moment.

Darcy meets her eyes, holds it for a few moments before touching the projection in front of her. “This is my main lead for whoever is going after our guys. Any light you can shed would be appreciated.” The image of the file slides over to Natasha and opens in front of her.

There’s no photo attached, and scant information otherwise; a list of confirmed and suspected kills over several decades. At first Natasha wants to congratulate someone who has worked that long on a life well seeped in paranoia and broken sleep, but then she actually notices the names on the kill lists and reads the name of the file. 

Winter Soldier.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, I'd like to thank my beta, weoffendedshadows, who isn't afraid to tear me down when needed. My army of personal of cheerleaders is still headed by someassemblyrequired.
> 
> I'd also like to point any of my readers towards my SIL, [tobinlaughing](http://archiveofourown.org/users/tobinlaughing) who is a wonderful writer and better friend.
> 
> As always, you can keep tabs on what I'm up to on my [tumblr](http://www.twistedingenue.tumblr.com)


	4. Chapter 4

She sometimes talks to him like he’s actually there, like he’s alive even. Darcy doesn’t really know why, because it’s not like she talked to Phil this way before. “It’s like the first good thing that’s happened in the last three months for us, and it’s all some weird mumbo-jumbo. I don’t even know how to use this intel about Winter Soldier — how the fuck do you integrate information from another reality?” she mutters as she chops up vegetables for lunch. The alarm had buzzed in the middle of her conversation with Natasha and the alarm is firm and resolute. You stop, no matter what, it’s time to stop and feed your scientist. “First good thing and it’s utter shit for them.”

 

“Yeah, it really is. But we’re SHIELD agents and Avengers, utter shit is just called Tuesdays. Wait until Fridays…” Clint enters the kitchen from the room where she left Natasha and roots through the fridge. Like really, make yourself at home. “We usually have alien invasions on Fridays.”

 

“I’ll stick with Russian brainwashed assassins, and most of the people I love being dead or missing, thank you.” She puts down her knife and looks at Clint, “Really? Aliens?”

“Really.” Clint pours himself a glass of water, “Our team got put together last spring when Loki, that’s Thor’s little brother by the way, attacked Earth with an alien fleet and brainwashed a bunch of people from SHIELD, myself included to do so.” He drinks the water in long gulps, downing the whole glass in a single go. Darcy watches every swallow and the curve of his throat and only manages to look away a split second before he puts down the glass. “We almost lost Coulson on that one, he’s only just returned to active duty for this mission.”  
Darcy stares down at the cutting board, lips pressed against each other and tries to will herself to take the knife back into her hand, slice the carrots thin for the wraps. She just has to feed Jane, that’s all.  Clint has a low voice that goes rough against the grain, but there’s this note of triumph to it and something small breaks. “You must be proud of him.”  
  


Clint blinks like he’s noticing Darcy there for the first time. “I just put my foot in my mouth there didn’t I? I forgot that you two were um, involved?”

 

Whole grain tortillas, romaine lettuce, carrots, chicken baked in a mustard sauce; Darcy tries to hold on to the immediate things before her. “It really wasn’t that much of a thing, not that sort. That part ended pretty quickly actually.”

 

And it’s cute how Clint’s ears turn just a little pink, probably thinking of Phil Coulson and sex in the same line of thought. “Didn’t sound that way from Jane.”

 

“Jane teases too much. She’ll latch onto something and never let it go if it amuses her.” Darcy makes quick work of the rest of the carrot, Clint leaning against the counter across from her. “Sex was good, but it burnt itself out, and we weren’t…he was...” Darcy doesn’t know how to finish this in a way that doesn’t make her feel so young. “He was just so sad.”

Darcy puts down the knife again, lays down the tortilla and starts assembling, “He was your handler? A top dog, I imagine?”

 

“Director Fury’s one good eye.” Clint says bitterly, like he’s recalling an unpleasant memory.

 

“Right, that sounds like something Fury would say in those final few months. For most of the time I knew him, he was just the head of Science and Logistics. Important yes, but not that kind of important. If you were around him for more than a half hour and actually watched him through this mild-mannered facade he was so good at putting up…. Well, he was just so sad, pulled an entire semi-truck of regret around with him.”

 

His apartment had been a tribute to the dead, she realizes now, all that Captain America nonsense on the wall. One of the few things that could light Phil up was talking about his hero,  but even that was tempered by a wistful expression for some time after the conversation. The shadow boxes on the wall that he did not talk about, like an altar or a shrine to ancestors long gone but not forgotten.

 

She lays carrots on top of lettuce, chicken on top of that, and rolls up the tortilla. “I don’t think he was ever able to overcome that and just drifted back.”

 

“But he worked with you, kept you off the SHIELD payroll,” Clint suggests.

 

Look, Darcy gets that this Hawkeye guy is SHIELD and probably very good at information-gathering, and she probably shouldn’t lay Coulson’s secrets down like this. She shouldn’t talk so much. But what does she have to hide now? If these guys are Hydra spies, they are already dead and everything is lost. If they’ve misplaced their trust, who will be left to give a shit?

 

“Yeah. Jane might have been on at some point, but Selvig was killed early on, and by that point, Jane had been scrubbed from the rolls. We were working out of New Mexico still, we’ve even still got a small presence there. There’s a very small team still around Thor’s Hammer left.” Clint grunts in recognition, confirming her suspicion that he and Natasha are passing information to each other quickly. They may have decided to trust each other, but that doesn’t mean they are going to be stupid and fucking blind about it. “We talked a lot; he taught me how to shoot and take care of weapons, and when shit really started going down, it got worse. I met Hill a few times. That was a crazy scary lady.”

 

She told Phil after meeting Maria Hill, she knew what she wanted to be when she grew up; a badass. Phil had laughed and did that almost touching thing he did and said that she already was.

“Some things don’t change,” Clint mutters under his breath and Darcy just laughs. “So he sort of took you under his wing?”

 

“I was getting into shit. He wanted me to be safe.” Darcy insists.

 

“No, I don’t think so. That’s the same sorts of things he was doing with me before those missions, turning me from a sniper asset to an agent. That mission that this Hawkeye died in was very early in that part of my career. I don’t think he trusted himself after that.” Clint leans forward and jabs a finger into the top of her sternum above the line of her tank top. “Then he met you and wanted to try again. You weren’t just a kid he kept around after sleeping with, Darcy, you were a protegee.”

 

Darcy takes hold of his finger, guiding it off of her chest, cuffing her hand around his fingers, “I seriously doubt that. Someone like Coulson doesn’t pick someone like me….”

 

“Yeah, that’s what I said too.” He turns his hand around in hers before giving it a squeeze and dropping it. “I think I saw how you did that, I can help.”

 

Darcy slides another tortilla over to him and repositions the fixings to be between them.

* * *

 

Rhodes and Pepper show up later in the afternoon and completely bypass Clint and Natasha before heading into a secured and soundproofed room. Darcy ushers them into an anteroom, one that Natasha doesn’t recall from before. Barton sits, leans his head against the wall and closes his eyes while Natasha stands opposite from him.

 

“Well?” Clint prompts. She pretends not to hear him, because that’s always a good way to pass the time. They’ve already gone over the everyone you cared for is dead here talk when it came to SHIELD “You were with JARVIS and the SHIELD database all day, what did you find out?” She inspects her nails, cleans out a few specs of dirt as Clint gets more and more agitated with her. “Nat,” he whines, “Don’t play this game with me today, I just spent the day with Dr Foster, member of the local Ironworkers Union.”

 

“And did you discover anything interesting about Dr Foster?”

 

Clint gives her a long hard stare. “She drinks more coffee than Stark, and would probably drink it cold if she wasn’t practically taking it via IV. She doesn’t much like keeping up the RESCUE suit and misses doing what she calls real work. Jane’s a hell of a shot for someone who didn’t pick up a gun until about ten months ago and braver than I am.”

 

“I already knew that. Thor wouldn’t fall for someone who wasn’t, speaking of which?” She asks but teases at the edges.

 

“Didn’t make it out of New Mexico. No godlike powers attained.” Clint looks down at his feet, uncomfortable with relaying that information. Natasha’s always been envious of Clint for this ability to turn off the taciturn of his face and his body language around her and when he is off the clock. She knows what’s next, things they have to talk about since this field trip to another universe may be more on the permanent side. “We know about Stark, so what about the rest?”

 

It would be so much easier if they could montage their way into forming their superhero coffee klatch, and then be able to investigate this world on their own, but somewhere along the line Natasha has realized  that she wants to put things to right, even if she did nothing to make them wrong.

 

Natasha experiments with pulling her lips to side, but finds she’s not comfortable letting go during something that feels like a debrief. Although, it’s a debrief with Clint.  Normally, she’s the straight guy in their comedy duo. Clint isn’t be very funny right now, though. “Banner is…was, captured at some point. Whereabouts were unknown by SHIELD, but there was a confidential note that suggests that the matter of the Hulk was dealt with permanently.”

 

Clint snorts, “He spits out bullets, how would they?” She watches as comprehension dawns and he remembers the worst case scenarios that have been drawn up. “You really think they launched him out into space? It wouldn’t kill him, would it? What about Cap?”

Natasha considers, “Probably not, but it would likely incapacitate him. Maybe. It’s hard to smash in space.”  
  


“Rogers?” He prompts again.

 

Natasha sits, rubs her face with her hand, “Discovered and unable to be revived. He has a lovely memorial in Arlington.” He was the first she’d looked up, certain that no one had managed to find him yet, and that they would be able to rescue him. But then there had been the pictures: a frozen through the bones and muscles, without a heartbeat, a compass with a faded photo clutched to his heart.

 

The door opens and Jane motions them inside. James is grumbling in the back corner of the room. Jane turns to him and says, “You are outvoted Rhodes. Deal with it.”

* * *

 

“Lewis,” James crowds the back of the conference table by himself, and greets Darcy with raised eyebrows. Jane pulls her legs up and continues to look over her tablet.

 

“Rhodes.” Darcy mimics his cold tone, translating it into their form of affection.

 

“The strays?”

 

“Aren’t they quite striking?” Darcy says lightly. Darcy’s stalking the left side of the table, closer to Pepper. “They are proving themselves useful too. That Hawkeye fellow helped me make lunch.”

 

“Where are they from, how did they get here?” Rhodes mouth tightens. “They just appeared in the building? How do you know they aren’t spies?” It’s a legitimate concern, and Pepper looks up to watch Darcy.

 

Darcy twists her mouth to the side and takes a deep breath, “Technically, they are spies. And assassins. Intelligence gatherers with a side of murder, which is a role in life that I can appreciate on a deep and personal level.”

 

“James,”  Jane pipes up, “You weren’t there. You couldn’t fake their reaction when you tell them that no one wears a SHIELD emblem and gets out of Madripoor alive.” The man still looks doubtful, and she understands, because it’s a lot more logical to think this is a trap than some fluke of the multiverse. “And you can’t fake SHIELD training or the depth of their knowledge, even when it’s a little off-center.”

 

“So why aren’t we helping them get home, Foster? Are you really wanting to pull them into our mess.”

 

“Because we really do know what we are doing.” Darcy mutters. Pepper nods in agreement.

 

Jane bites her bottom lip, tries to calm herself down, wishing that James would just do the same and see what has to be done, see the reasoning in front of his face. But Rhodey doesn’t like variables, has little patience these days for the less cut and dry, and he gets a little paterfamilias with them sometimes. It’s not a bad thing, it’s just that, without Tony, his flexibility is diminished. “I won’t say I’ll never work on that James. It’s not fair to keep them here if we had the capability to send them back where they came from. But you like your suit running, and so does Pepper, and I have enough to sort through here that is already entire fields away from anything I’ve worked with before.”

 

It’s another long standing argument. Jane needs more help, but they can’t risk the remaining SHIELD scientists and they can’t trust any others. Pepper’s been looking Jane over, approval written over her calm face. “I’d rather risk the drop-in’s than anyone we’d need to send them home.”

 

Rhodes doesn’t know who to stare at. “Oh for fucks sake,” Jane puts her feet down and explodes out of her chair and it rolls to the wall as she walks to the door and opens it. “You are outvoted Rhodes. Deal with it.”

* * *

 

Once everyone is settled and Rhodes stops looking at the pair like they are going to murder them all on the spot, Jane looks to Pepper hoping she’ll start them out this time.

She does, because Pepper can’t resist running meetings, it’s probably ingrained into her very soul. If it were up to Jane, everything would be settled via email, and if it were up to Darcy, well, Darcy wouldn’t just run around getting opinions and then do things her way. And that’s why they have meetings.  
  


“What’s going on in the known world?” Pepper asks plainly. Clint and Natasha are sitting in their chairs; Clint lazily attentive, something Jane has seen in college students the world over. Natasha is more active, and Jane thinks that she’s got the quicker mind for detail work.

 

“Let’s celebrate the year anniversary of the New Mexico crater site still being an active installation,” Darcy says with false cheer. “We’ve kept them alive. Woo.” She finishes, twirling a finger. “Patrick says no movement from Mjolnir, but that there was some strange but weak readings from it yesterday. Might have something to do with our Wonder Twins here, maybe. Or just Asgard strangeness, since the timing was after they popped into existence.”  

 

“I’m actually heartened by the lack of people worthy to wield the power of Thor in this world,” Darcy responds, more to herself than to anyone out loud.

 

“We’ve tracked some movement in the North Atlantic,” James says, and Clint’s head raises and tilts, listening with greater attention. “It’s not any of our guys, not any government trying to stealthily find oil, so guess is…”

 

“HYDRA or AIM?” Pepper finishes for him. “Keep an eye on it.”

 

“Did Howard Stark recover a power source?” Natasha asks, “It would have been midcentury if at all.”

 

Pepper consults JARVIS, which takes a moment as he (Jane has gotten used to JARVIS being a he) searches through the records before stating that there is no record of any discovery of that nature.

 

Clint closes his eyes. “Then they’ve figured out that the Tesseract is still hanging out around Earth.”

 

“What’s a Tesseract?” James asks, leaning forward on his elbows.

 

“On it’s base level? It’s a power source that originated somehow from Asgard, Thor didn’t exactly give us the full history on it,” Clint starts, furrowing his brows in an effort to recall history, but he gives that up to talk about more recent days. “I was assigned to security in the facility where SHIELD was studying it, and they, well, Dr Selvig mostly.” Jane’s chest tightens,  and she wants to like these two, but they make her feel things that hurt; she’s so tired of that, but she has to pay attention to Clint as he continues. “Found that they could harness it as a passageway, rip a hole or a doorway to some other place.”

 

“Loki brought an army with it to try to take over the Earth. We didn’t let that happen,” Natasha finishes, holding Clint’s troubled expression and then clears her throat. “I’m not sure how it works, but it might be able to take us home. If it’s still around.”

 

“I can probably maneuver some people out that way, keep an eye on things. “ James scribbles some notes down. A thousand types of technology and he uses a pad of paper. “Imperfect, but it’s what we can do.”

 

“Thank you Rhodey,” Darcy says and the sincerity is even real, and she pulls up a display screen, “Now, thanks to the lovely Black Widow, we’ve got a great deal of insight on the man, yes just one, that’s been ferreting out the remaining SHIELD teams. His codename is Winter Soldier, his loyalties are varied, and I think we need to take a trip to New Mexico if we want to keep that team alive for much much longer.“ Darcy never takes a moment to shake or fidget as she lays out a strategy that may well keep them all alive.

 

Jane looks at their strays, she likes that term. Natasha is closed off and tight, and nodding along. But Clint watches Darcy, like he’s trying to figure out where her lines of thought originate, and Jane isn’t sure if that’s disturbing or something she should have tried months ago.


	5. Chapter 5

New Mexico is as enchanting as ever, Darcy ponders as she’s stuck in the back of the Pinzgauer, throwing a ball against the sides of what used to be the science van and has been reconverted back to the it’s original usage as an utility vehicle, with a little extra highly mobile information gathering devices. They’ve kept the AI’s off of it though, too risky to port even a JARVIS-light into a vehicle that can really only go 70 on a very good day.  
  
“So why do they call it the Land of Enchantment anyways?” she says out loud. Jane kicked her out of driving, and Pepper is up front with her, so really, she’s just talking to Rhodey and the strays.  
  
“I think it’s supposed to be beautiful,” Clint says, because god knows that Rhodey isn’t in a joking mood today. Rhodey is quite possibly asleep in the way that only military people can sleep in the middle of everything. “It looks like a bunch of sand to me. Sand and landmarks. Some scrub brush.”  
  
“I never got the appeal.” Darcy frowns; New Mexico is a whirlwind. Her life was normal before this, just a kid needing a few semester hours to fill a void before the last of her required classes were offered in the fall. Just an intern who got coffee, made copies and the morning doughnuts. And then, it was gods and monsters, men with more steel and sadness in their veins than blood, and Jane, beautiful, glorious Jane who struggled with the reasons behind her work until she cried. She doesn’t get the appeal of New Mexico.  
  
“I never did either.” Clint keeps his eyes above her, out one of the few hazy windows the pinz has, his eyes on their surroundings. She thinks she likes that about him; he’s got situational awareness.  
  
“Where you’re from, what’s pretty?” she asks. They’ve asked a lot of questions about this universe, questions that don’t really make sense even (what the hell is a chitauri?), but none of her team has really asked anything about theirs. Turnabout, fair play, all that shit.  
  
Clint brings his gaze down to her, looks at her like the question is batshit. “A million things to ask, and you want to know what scenery I like best?”  
  
Darcy shrugs, “What else am I going to ask?”  
  
“You honestly don’t want to know about yourself?” Clint folds his arms, leans back as far as he can and spreads his legs out wide. It looks lazy, but it’s a challenge, “Even Rhodes asked Natasha about himself, last night. It was the first thing I wanted to know.”  
  
“Some of us look beyond our own noses,” Darcy tries weakly. It’s not going to work, because Barton is already scoffing at her. Some deep agitation churns, not at the pit of her stomach, but more at the base of her spine and radiating upwards. She slumps forward and has to pull herself back up, lifting herself back up by the chest bone first. “I know exactly what I am in your universe.  I might be pretty, I might be smart —Jane’s assistant has to be to keep up, maybe even a little brave under pressure. But when it comes down to it, I’m nothing really.  Sometimes I feel like I only got started because I watched a good man die.” Her voice is short and quiet, not wanting to wake Rhodey, and she knows Natasha is listening, even if she’s not looking at either of them. “I’d never seen that before, never seen anything where the brave person loses in the end. And I’ve learned that lesson on a large scale and I know what it is to kill.” Darcy pauses, closes her eyes against the memories and against how good it feels to balance things out just a little bit. “So I don’t want to know who I am in your world. I already know, because I was her.”  
  
She looks down at her own hands, wrings them together a few times, her face carefully blank. “So I’d really rather know what’s pretty where you are from, if that’s alright with you?”

* * *

  
Mjolnir is, predictably, right where they left it. Jane stares it down, the writing glowing in the midday sun.  
  
“Well, have your fun.” She  holds her hand out towards the the damn thing. Somewhere along the line, what started as a way to honor Thor became a tradition. Darcy goes first, lays her hand around the handle but doesn’t pull. Pepper goes next, then James, and of course there’s no movement, no give for any of them.    
  
“You should try,” Darcy says with a little sarcastic smirk to Clint and Natasha, “Unless, of course you don’t think you are worthy.” She challenges and teases in a bittersweet voice.  
Natasha declines but Clint laughs and walks up and hams it up, pulling and leveraging himself against the head. Even Rhodes has a hard time containing his amusement at his antics.  
  
“So what happened here?” Natasha asks quietly, and Jane looks around and realizes that Natasha probably has never seen the crater site. “I didn’t go to New Mexico during the incident but this isn’t — Clint was there, he said that it got torn up, but not like this. You said it was an active installation.”  
  
Right. Jane tries to see it from her perspective, and yes, it looks like a war came to visit and no one bothered to  tear down the ruins to start over. The infrastructure, the support beams, a crane, all look like they could have been abandoned after the attack a year ago. “Same old story, we just got better at hiding the damage. Let’s go in, everyone. Jane?”  
  
Jane blinks, presses her lips together. “Give me a moment?”  
  
Pepper looks over Jane and past her to Mjolnir. Jane doesn’t know why she feels that she has so much in common with Pepper over these things. But Pepper nods and herds the team along, letting Jane have her moment.  
  
She’s alone and she kneels in front of the hammer. “It’s been two years, and I knew you for three days. You ate my food and made me feel brave for the first time in my life and then I thought maybe I’d translate that bravery back into my work.” She hits the ground with her hand, palms down and dust flies up. “Instead I fight and help others fight, and I’ve lost so many people from Erik on down and it all starts with you. And I’m terrified I’m going to lose the ones I still have and I still go out there.” Her lips are dry, cracked — she hates New Mexico, the dry heat. “I still go out there. And Darcy, oh, sometimes it’s hard to see but she’s rung so tightly and I don’t think she’ll be happy until her hands are so dirty with blood that it’ll never come off, and I don’t know how long I can watch her do that.” Unlike everyone else, she doesn’t pull at the handle, but instead brings her hands up along the sides, feeling the engraving and the unfamiliar runes, before dropping her head, “And I’m just going to keep going until there’s nothing left to give, because as strange as it seems, it’s what you would want and it’s what I need to do.”  
  
It’s all she can do kneel there, her head low and holding Mjolnir like an anchor. There’s so much more she wants to say, but this isn’t a gravesite and it’s not like Thor can hear anyways. There’s only one thing left to do, so she stands, her hands sliding up the handle and she pulls.  
It doesn’t move. But there’s something feels like a shift of weight when she releases her grip, one that doesn’t come from her body. She stares at it in horror and surprise, taking a step back. Darcy yells out to her and she runs to catch up.

* * *

  
“Who are they?” Dr Liu asks, folding his arms and inching away from them. Colonel Rhodes had given Barton and Natasha a rundown of the New Mexico installation on their way over. A small team placed here a year and a half ago, after the original group was raided and killed in one of the first joint attacks by HYDRA and AIM. What they hadn’t managed to uncover was that SHIELD went underground on occasion, and now a three scientist and one agent team worked to both safeguard and watch Mjolnir and work on the remains of the Destroyer.  
  
“Tony had wanted to take it home with him, but Director Fury and Agent Coulson dug in their heels,” Pepper explained. “That was probably for the best. I wouldn’t trust Tony not to bring that thing back to life.” She shudders. “And he was working on RESCUE at the time without my knowledge.”  
  
Instead, Natasha finds out, they found some scientists willing to work underground and put an agent named Jimenez in charge of them as the first independent science team, reporting to Coulson.  Jimenez is unfamiliar to either her or Clint, one of those people that she’s never paid attention to in the hallways or someone that never joined SHIELD in the first place.  
But he ends up being a too-young Latino man, with a polite face and a foul temper, probably exacerbated by the scientists on his watch.  
  
“Friends,”  Dr. Foster says to Liu, “working with us for the time being.” Liu casts a distrustful eye on both her and Clint, and she can’t blame him for that at all.  
  
“You said you needed to brief us?” Jimenez sends Liu a cutting glare, “We been fucking made finally?”  
  
“Yes,” Pepper says simply, and she looks more imposing after suiting up. Rhodes hasn’t yet, complained of the bulk, but it was dragged into the building for him to put on shortly. “But we’ve managed to get here first, Agent, so we’re going to do our best to stop them.”  
  
“Shit, well, get right to it then. I’m not looking to die anytime soon.”  
  
At best, they are only a day ahead of Winter Soldier, and some movement shows that he may not be working alone this time. Darcy holds up her tablet. “We’re not sure where the leak came from, probably in town somewhere, but they’ve put two and two together. What they are actually after is another artifact, but they want their hands on anything Asgardian, and possibly the people who work on them.”  
  
“That they are sending Winter Soldier indicates that they at least want some of you dead,” Natasha adds. “He’s not very well known for keeping people alive.”  
  
Clint leans over and whispers, “Neither were you.” Which is a very good point. She could be swayed, perhaps the same can happen here. But she was more trained; the Winter Soldier James, wasn’t merely trained, he was used and wiped clean. It will be harder. It will be worth it.  
  
“We want to keep all of you out of sight. Clint,” Darcy continues, her pacing bringing her towards him and she touches his chest when she says his name, “can you figure out where the sight lines are?”  
  
“Done it before,” he says and Lewis narrows her eyes. “What, I have!”  
  
Jimenez glares at Clint. “This shithead on something? How could he have done it before? I keep a careful watch here.”  
  
“It’s a long story that we don’t have time for. Clint, figure out the sight lines, Pep and I will suit up and keep an aerial watch. Agent, keep your guys underground. Ladies? A perimeter?”  
  
Jane and Darcy nod, pulling the guns from their backs forward, doing a quick check on them. It’s still a little disconcerting to see the two of them armed and competent with those arms.  Darcy stops for a second and looks at her friend. “Actually, Jane? Let Natasha and I start the perimeter checks, why don’t you go catch up with Liu and the others for a little bit?”  
  
Jane’s contorts her face strangely, going from something hard and sad to a quiet smile that broadens as she says, “that’s a great idea Darce, thank you.” Jane looks over Liu and bites her lip, “Let me just…” she takes off the gun entirely and hands it to Darcy.  
  
Jane doesn’t look back as Dr Liu leads her into the underground portion of the installation, and she’s as relaxed and happy as Natasha has seen her yet.

 


	6. Chapter 6

 

“Have you given any thought to my proposal?” Pepper asks James over their private channel. Having James with them here is a blessing and a real chance to catch up. Jane and Darcy keep her from being lonely, but they are so often still just kids in many ways. Children struggling with themselves, yes, but they haven’t lived the years she has, and they don’t know they life she lead. Rhodes does, Rhodes has been there before there even was a her.    
  
Rhodes remembers when she wore flats and worked as an accounting clerk.  

  
“Pepper,” He starts hesitantly, but continues, “It’s not that easy. I just can’t leave.”

  
“It could be,” Pepper retorts, because Rhodey is just dragging his feet. Metaphorically speaking, at least. “We could use you full time. I’ll set you up on the payroll, give you a real title, responsibilities. It won’t be an empty gesture.”

  
“You just want the War Machine back in Stark hands,” Rhodes counters. “It’s not really about me becoming big man of the badass women’s squad, you do just well enough on your own.”

Of course it’s about getting the suit back under Stark control, and it’s good that James knows that. But Pepper has a legacy to keep, and a business to run and her reputation on the line. Having a partner, another adult who can see bigger pictures than just revenge and retaliation, that’s important. Having someone to reign in Lewis when she plans bigger and more devious, more bloody encounters. Someone else that can keep Jane level, someone else that knows the suits, that’s what’s at stake.

  
Someone to keep her company, that goes unsaid, but she think James gets it. His breath catches and he sighs. “Let me think more about it Potts, I have a lot of things that have to balance out.”

  
The alarms start ringing out on RESCUE, JARVIS in her ear, and displaying visuals.

  
“We’ve got trouble,” Rhodey states calmly over the public line. “At least ten hostile, coming in from all points. No visual confirmation of Winter Soldier.”

  
“Make that nine. This one was by himself,” Clint’s instructed them to call him Hawkeye over the channel, which does amuse her a little bit and she smiles. “And I’ve laid traps over the likely sniper positions, we will know if he goes for any of them.”

  
“I need a headcount and positions.” Darcy’s tense and cool voice instructs, slipping into the rhythm of an op.

  
“RESCUE, up high.” She starts them.

  
“War Machine, up high.”

  
“Jane, in the bunker.”

  
“Hawkeye, up on the roof.”

  
“Widow, southwest perimeter.”

  
“Darcy, Northeast perimeter.”

  
They have their traditions. Always start with a check of where everyone is, who is with who, who has what arms. Pepper always thought that if she ever were a soldier, a member of SHIELD, that this would be her role. Organize, plan, evaluate, bring light and understanding through the chaos, it made sense for it to be her role in battle as it is in the rest of her life.

 

She never counted on RESCUE though, and with that her world changed. Oh, not the rest of it. Pepper is still the top of all she can see, and brilliant at it, but once she’s in RESCUE, her focus is radically changed and it’s all she can do to stay on top of this madness. She doesn’t have Tony’s manic brain; hers doesn’t work like his, but as much he designed the suit perfectly to her body, the processing was an entirely different thing. She knows that War Machine is a straightforward act of machinery, but Tony couldn’t but give Pepper the best and all the bells and whistles.  JARVIS helps; streamlines the inputs and the displays. But even then, she can’t wield control like a knife.

  
But Darcy can, because Darcy has both that manic, impish nature that’s been overlaid and tempered by control and a ruthless efficiency and can effortlessly switch from  being a powerhouse in a fight to sitting back and calling the shots. It’s a relief not to have to make some decisions, and Pepper will gladly take whatever reprieve she can manage.

* * *

 

“I could be of use out there, you know,” Agent Jimenez says, pacing the bunkers back room.

Jane rolls her eyes and sucks in her breath, grips the butt of her gun just a little tighter. The chatter on the channel isn’t constant, just enough to know that they’ve lost track of a small cell of the attackers. She doesn’t like that they are just waiting to be slaughtered in a small room. She doesn’t like that Jimenez seems to think that just because he’s SHIELD that he somehow outweighs a mere scientist with a gun. She’s the one who has been keeping his shit ass alive. He was a paper pusher analyst, not a field agent.

  
No, clear your head, she thinks, because right now is not the time to be petty. Petty doesn’t get you anywhere. “Have we located our missing goons yet?” She snaps into her headset.  
  
“I’m getting a little antsy over here.”

  
“I’m falling back to you, Jane,” Darcy says raggedly, running hard and fast.   
  
“I’ve picked back up two of them. They won’t trouble you anymore,” Widow is a masterpiece, honestly.

  
“Where there are ten, there are usually more,” Pepper says over the sound of repulsor fire. “War Machine, can you see far enough to see where their exit strategy is. Maybe we can cut off a few heads.”

  
“Why settle for the head? This  is HYDRA. You need to get them through the heart so they don’t respawn.”

  
“Rhodey, Jesus,” Hawkeye laughs. “Whatever video game you’re playing, we are going to have to have a tournament. Winner pays for pizza.”

  
But outside of the com chatter, it’s getting too quiet, unnaturally so. It’s a bunker, she should be able to hear the electronics whine, something more than just the hum of the overhead lights. Jimenez starts picking up on it too, and asks, “How far is it to the next safehouse?”

Too far.  But this is not going well. There’s still two more out there, and a sniper who can pick them off as they go. The science team has drilled for this though, they know that their lives have been living on a blind timer for a year now, if not longer.  
  
An actual assault means they want something, someone, some information. It’s not Jimenez. What’s another SHIELD agent dead or alive? So scientists, that’s obvious. Jane takes a look at the three scientists in the room with her as the lights begin to flicker.

  
Liu is smart, but not technically in the right field. Biologist. Hardings, is a more than capable physicist and she has a naive optimism that’s strange for someone thats been under attack for two years. It’s refreshing. Jacobs is an idiot, but a good manager. If HYDRA is gunning for anyone to take alive, it’s probably Hardings.

  
The lights flicker again. “Okay. I can’t wait here any longer. We’re about to hit darkness. Can I get some cover to get to the pinz and get these guys out of here?” The lights go out, and there’s nothing coming out her headset. Fuck. “Well, okay. Let’s get out of here.” She weighs turning the light on of her rifle against the fact that it will make her very, very obvious. She switches it on, because if she’s going down, it’s not going to be cowering in the basement.

 

“Jimenez, bring up the rear and keep the kids together. I’ll take point and lead us out.”

  
He, for once, doesn’t argue, just grabs the scientists and puts them together as Jane begins to take the stairs up towards the surface. Liu takes ragged breaths the entire way; you would think that a year in the desert with nothing to do but procrastinate on your work would mean you’d work out a little bit.

  
When she cracks open the door to the ground floor, she knows trouble, she smells it through the air, and snaps, “Wait here!” in a harsh tone to the scientists and slips out, hears the footsteps  of heavy boots. She steps out quietly and quickly falls for cover behind a table. Two soldiers were dismantling the equipment, searching for something before noticing her and starting to fire on her.

  
Her hands shake when she returns with a quick salvo. She misses, but lays down enough fire to distract and keep them from firing back. Jane could really use her backup right now,  wishes Darcy or War Machine would walk in with their guns, but it’s just her right now and she’s got people to protect.

  
Jane lays down more fire and then steadies her aim, fires right on target, taking one down, then the next. And she thinks, somehow, she’ll never detach from the violence the way everyone else does, it’s always going to be with her. She looks up and swallows down before giving the all clear.

  
The door is kicked open and there’s Darcy, “Damn Foster, didn’t leave any for me?”

  
“Let’s just get everyone to the van, Lewis.” She rolls her eyes and readies the rifle back up as Jimenez brings the scientists up to meet them, giving instructions and actually doing a fairly good job of it.

  
“My headset isn’t working,” Jane says, a little lamely, pointing to her ear. There’s a tingle in her fingertips that isn’t going away. Adrenaline, she supposes, though this has never happened before.

  
“Mine is, we can stick together,” Darcy says grim-faced, “You cool?”

  
“I’m cool, I’m cool.” Jane shakes her head. “Let’s get them out of here.” She turns to Hardings, “Do you have your backups?” Hardings nods, and she can’t stop the little tremor in her step, in her hands, in her face. She’s terrified.

  
They slip out the back exit, and it’s started to rain, when there wasn’t a single cloud in the sky earlier, and as Liu starts running with the rest, he slips and falls. Jimenez, still in the back, stops to help them up, when suddenly they both fall over backwards, Liu toppling over Jimenez, his mouth open in a breathless scream as blood starts to stain his clothes. There’s not a noise from the agent except the thud of his body.

  
“Just run!” Darcy screams, scanning the buildings and seeing the angles.

  
Someone falls from a crane, tucked and rolled, an arrow bouncing off of him. When Jane looks back at Darcy, she has a small smile on her face. “Sorry,” she says, “you can’t hear Hawkeye swearing up a storm forgetting about the arm thing.”

  
Right, the arm, Natasha told them about the prosthetic that the Soldier has, vastly overpowered and pressure sensitive. And strong, stronger than any person has a right to be. More shots, and it’s Jacob who falls to his knees, an incoherent wheeze as his face hits the dirt.

  
Hardings screams and freezes, tears streaming down her face. “I’m next, oh my god, I’m next, I’m next there’s no one left but me.”

  
“Fuck that. RESCUE we need you here, now,” Darcy growls into her headset. “Pick up Hardings and get her out, get her high, I don’t care. I’m finishing this.” She starts running.

 

It’s less than a minute before Pepper is there, picking Hardings up in a swoop and flying back out, with Hardings sobbing and scared out of her wits. She’s nothing more than broken down. That she was SHIELD doesn’t mean she can’t break down. It’s reasonable, it’s expected. Jane understands. The tingle in her fingers has traveled into her wrists, and she feels almost light now.

  
She follows Darcy. Remember when Darcy used to follow you, her brain supplies for her.

Darcy’s been fighting up close, and she hears the splash of more running from various angles. Her friend’s hair is torn out from it’s ponytail and her eye is swelling, but she’s towering over a man on his hands and knees, with an arrow in the flesh of his shoulder.

 

Darcy has her SIG out and pressed to his head, and she’s cold and buried tight.

 

He coughs and sags. “I’m not expecting you to let me live.”

  
“That’s an astounding display of good sense.” Darcy says flatly and it hits Jane, the things the Natasha said about the Winter Soldier. That his name is James, that he can slip in to be American without any difficulty, and that his memory has been stripped away and reprogrammed time after time.

It’s sick how this compassion feels, and it boils up inside of her. “Darcy!”

  
“How long have they been using you, soldier?” Darcy says to the back of his head. Jane watches his face — his eyes are surrounded by a mask, but they are stunningly blue, chilled like ice and disbelieving. “How long?” she yells, as Hawkeye runs up behind her, stopping  as she repeats herself. Her voice steels, “Were you at Tromso? Prague?” She pushes his head down further, “Were you there when they took down the Helicarrier?”

  
“Darcy!” Jane tries staring her down, but the other woman won’t meet her gaze. “Darcy, we don’t do this.”

“No, I think this is what we do now.” Darcy lifts her head as Widow walks in from wherever she was, directly in Darcy’s line of sight.

  
Something about the way Natasha moves causes the Soldier’s eyes to slowly scan up and widen, the first expression that seems, well soft. “Natalia?” he says when she comes close, and something just seems to break, “Natalia, Natalia…” he repeats over and over until it becomes a whispered mantra.

  
Jane crumbles inside of herself, watching this man that they’ve been tracking for weeks come undone with just the sight of Natasha.

  
“I broke through it James,” she tilts her head to the side, hair falling, “You can break through it too.”

  
“Yeah, that won’t be needed.” Darcy smiles darkly, her eyes narrowing and her weight shifting.

  
“Darcy,” Jane says through gritted teeth, “You need to stand down. We don’t do this. We don’t do it this way, Darcy.We don’t and we can’t kill someone who has been brainwashed and controlled for decades. Not without giving him the chance to  get out of it. We don’t do this!”

  
Darcy has a cut on her scalp, shallow, but it’s a bleeder, and the blood hugs the line of her face in the rain, “He hasn’t shown mercy for the hundreds, for the thousands he’s helped murder. Why should I show a scrap when I can see the bodies of the men he’s killed just yards away Jane? When I can see them when I close my eyes to sleep?” The color has seeped out of her face and Hawkeye has taken a few steps to be directly behind her.

  
“Because we’re the good guys, Darce,” Jane says quietly, and her voice wavers until it falls on determined. “And we have to be bigger in our hearts when we are outnumbered.” Jane lets the rain fall on her, the light and the tingle and the pull building up in her arms and she can’t explain it, but she feels almost magnetic as Darcy shifts her weight again, pulling the gun away from the Soldiers head.

* * *

 

Clint deftly removes the gun from Darcy’s hands, then twists her arms  so that he’s holding them against her back tightly. She’s slack against his grip and hangs her head, sloops her shoulders almost until he’s holding her upright, like all the will has gone out of her.

  
Natasha kneels in front of Winter Soldier, and in his ears he hears that Pepper and Rhodes have Hardings safe and are waiting for them.

  
She asks, “How far are you under HYDRA’s control?” But Winter Soldier doesn’t even look up.

He does answer though: “Not HYDRA, Lukin. Natalia? I thought you were dead? They said…”

Natasha rests back on her heels, and it’s only the years together they’ve had together that means he can see every line of thought going through her carefully expressionless face before she decides on a course of action. “Do I look dead?”

  
“No,” he blinks several times and finally pulls his head up, “You look beautiful.” His expression sours, “I feel strange.”

  
“Tell me about it,” Clint can’t stop himself from saying, “You look like the guts fell out of you.”

  
“Your programming is weakening,” Natasha says pointedly. “If you stay out of Lukin’s grasp, you might escape from it.” She stands up.

A large bolt of lightning strikes the top of the installation’s beams.

  
“Guys?” Jane says, her voice trembling and her arm raising to the side. She’s staring at it in horror. “Guys? Can you feel this?”

  
Everyone turns to her, even Natasha, even Darcy, who weakly lifts her head.

  
“I’ve been feeling it for a little while, thought it was nerves,” Jane’s eyes are wide and she keeps swallowing. There’s more thunder and lightening concentrated on the buildings around them. “But now I don’t know.”

  
The sound that fills the air in the space between the low rumbling thunder is familiar, but only to him and Natasha. They both start looking around them for the sight they are somehow expecting even a universe away.

  
“You don’t feel this?” Jane says plaintively, pleading between ragged breaths, and doesn’t even stumble when there’s an audible smack against her outstretched hand. Unbidden, she raises it up and is engulfed in light.

  
Darcy struggles, nearly falling over, but Clint adjusts to hold her wrists in one hand and the other one holding her steady around her waist. Natasha stands up and turns towards Jane.

  
“Oh my god.” Darcy whispers, rich in despair.

  
The light is almost too bright to see through, but there’s no sound coming from Jane, and the light whirls and it’s like an assembly of particles around the slight scientist, tessellating and interlocking pieces and a flash of red fabric only just visible.

  
When the light subsides it’s still Jane. She’s no bigger than before, but she’s holding Mjolnir in her hands and it’s Thor’s armor that fits like skin around her, the cape that falls to her ankles and broadens her shoulders.

  
“Whoever holds this hammer, if he be worthy, shall possess the power of Thor,” Darcy recites from memory, awed and unable to look away from Jane. She looks the most collected she has since they’ve met, a sense of purpose and fire locked into her eyes. She’s no bigger, but she feels taller in his estimation.

  
“Is this what Thor looks like?” Darcy says, trying to shake off Clint’s grip, and he lets go.

  
“Yeah,” he replies, dry mouthed.

  
“It’s a good look,” She says evenly, taking her first steps towards Jane then running over to her to wrap her arms around each other. It takes a few minutes for everyone to realize that during the light show, the Winter Soldier has escaped and even sending the suits out overhead, they can’t find him.  

  


 


	7. Chapter 7

Over the next week, Natasha takes Jane under her wing and tries to help her acclimate to the new-found, well, Thor-ness of her situation. Clint watches in amusement as Jane calls down lightning and crashes into things learning how to fly, and learns how to fight with her new found strength.

She’s more agile than Thor is (was? Had been? Could have been? Clint does not know how to categorize going through the looking glass in terms of history) and has a little less brute strength. But Jane is smarter with it, and apparently one of the powers of Thor is situational awareness. Clint can’t land anything on her without her dodging or at least catching the projectile. It’s fascinating, how the differences that the godly power hit Jane.

She’s not quite as majestic looking for one, but that might be the way she grins goofily whenever she does something new. Jane has a hunger in her eyes though; this is new knowledge and a new connection and it’s opening her up. She ditches the cape as impractical and accidently knocks Tasha out more than once.

Clint realizes he hasn’t seen Darcy for more than a fleeting glance in a week. Food still arrives, enough for everyone (she didn’t notice when Rhodes left to go back to the Air Force for two days). He finally finds her in the room converted to gym use late at night, setting up a bar for deadlifts in tiny shorts and at least one industrial strength sports bra. He tries not to figure out if there’s a second set of straps.

“What do you lift?” he asks, stepping into the light from the dark hallways. It really is late, most everyone is asleep or should be at least.

Darcy spares him a withering glance before tightening her gloves. “170, I’ve been neglecting it.”

Clint does some quick calculations in his head, looking at her size.“Not bad though.”

“Could be better.” She fidgets a bit, setting her feet shoulder width apart and squats down, her hips low and gripping the bar outside of her knees. She breathes her back into position, arching her back slightly and pulling her shoulders back and looking up. Then she lifts, her heels digging into the floor the only way it doesn’t look too easy for her and she brings her body straight.

Deadlifts aren’t a go heavy and go home workout though, and one rep isn’t enough. Darcy does it again and again, and Clint’s pretty content to just watch as she work through her sets.

“You know Barton, it’s impolite to stare,” She says when she’s done resetting her weights. “Could give a girl a complex.”

“It’s also impolite to hide from your friends, Lewis.” It’s tough to read her reaction, Natasha is much better at that, but she seems to shift from angry to ashamed and then to a more neutral smile.

“Not hiding, everyone’s getting what they need from me.” She bares her teeth a little. “They get fed and watered, and all the timers are set up so they sleep. They don’t need to see me for me to get my work done. And lets face it, Jane’s a little busy right now.”

“So you don’t want to see her?”

“I don’t think I’m her favorite person right now.” She jumps on her toes, rolling the energy through bare feet,  toe to heel and back again. “Be useful, spar with me?” He really can’t say no to that. For once, he might have a chance to beat someone he teams with.

Darcy’s a good fighter, even without years built on years of lived experience and muscle memory. He can see the signatures of half a dozen SHIELD agents in her movement: Coulson’s efficiency and inventiveness, Hill’s ability to turn on a dime, even Woo’s innate calmness. He wonders just what is her own style, or if she’s still just aping others. She holds her hand up to break.

“Not bad,” He says, breathing hard.

“Could be better.” Darcy grins, her face flushed and she grins loosely, lost a little in the sudden stillness of her body.

“Yeah, it could be,” he agrees, “I saw your fight with Winter Soldier. Nearly got your ass handed to you if it weren’t for me. That arrow I buried in his shoulder was your saving grace girlie.”

Darcy reluctantly nods in agreement, but turns away from him. Her shoulder bears a nasty scar, and the rest of her body has marks of overuse. “So then help me. Where am I going wrong?” She’ll push until she’s dead, he realizes, and he’d really like to make that in the far future.

He tells her to turn around and look at him. When she does, her eyebrow is raised in disbelief. “You might be a fine looking man, Barton, but what does this have to do with how I fight?”

“Body mechanics. A stupid one.” He puts a clinical hand on her waist.  “Look down.” She levels her gaze at him before he wordlessly implores her to humor him. She drops her head and he feels the muscles loosen and jut out. “See, you’re strong, not disputing that, but where your head goes, so goes the rest of your body. You have to stay solid through here,” he moves his hands on her bare skin, “without that, you’ll eventually lose.”

Her gaze still on the ground, Darcy swallows. “Thank you, by the way, for you know. All the things. With the arrow and the holding me back.”

There, that’s what this is about. He has no idea what to expect out of Darcy. Doesn’t know if she’s constantly holding back that sort of rage, and doesn’t even think it was completely poor judgement to want to kill him. That he understands all too well. Darcy lives in a world of death and doesn’t have much else to distract her. Jane and Pepper both have outside work, but Darcy’s view is entirely wrapped up in support and control and the lives that are gone.

“One person's death doesn’t make up for everyone else’s,” He replies, moving his hands to her shoulders, meant to give just a little bit of grounding and comfort.

“Might not hurt though,” Darcy sighs, “but you both were right to do that. Even if he got away.” She looks up at him, “What do you think of that?”

“I don’t think he’s running back to HYDRA or anyone else.”

“There’s a crazy part of me that thinks I’ve seen him before, like I’d seen you before.” She laughs and bites her lip looking up at Clint. “I think that I’m seeing ghosts everywhere now.” Darcy’s not a tall woman and she drops her head again, this time against his chest, bats him a couple of times with it. “Hey look, where my head goes so does the rest of me.”

Hey look, she’s kissing him. That’s new. She tastes like sweat and salt, kisses with the humor she was lacking in her fighting. This is a really bad idea, but when he pulls back she doesn’t even try to apologize but she’s totally wicked, and feels really good as she snakes an arm around his neck. It’s been a long time in the wrong place, and she’s got so much bare skin that he’s just going to forget how much of a bad idea this and run his hand just under the waistband of her shorts and maneuver her over to the gym mats in the corner.

***

“Hold still,” Jane says, pinning Pepper’s arm down again, because she seriously can’t lay still in the suit. She fidgets and squirms, and the cool resolve that Pepper normally permeates and owns is gone when it comes to the suit when she isn’t out there fighting. It might be a second skin to her by now, but RESCUE isn’t her own skin; it’s Tony’s vision of her.

That’s a little harrowing, to be encompassed by your dead lover’s intensity all the time. Jane understands this now. Thor may not have been her lover, but now, he might as well be. He was inside of her in an incredibly intimate way, in every cell and structure. She has his strength now, a twitch in her senses whenever someone draws near, and she can call down lightning and fly.

How does a hammer know who is worthy? Why is she?

Jane sighs, and Pepper tenses and stills her arm underneath Jane’s firm grasp.  “Careful there, Foster, you’ll dent it,” Pepper says kindly and Jane releases her hands completely, swearing, and shakes out her fingers before returning them to Pepper’s forearm, and opening up the panel to reach the wiring. “What’s it like?” Pepper asks.

“It’s…strange. In one way, I don’t feel that much different. It all feels like who I am, like a rightness,” Jane works, quickly rewiring the hand controls that had jammed in tests the previous day. “But it’s like everything about me has changed. I don’t know how to work my muscles anymore, I don’t understand how swinging a heavy tool means I can fly and how the weather changes when I use it.” She pauses and knits her eyebrows together. “I really don’t understand that. How is it that I’m not creating massive weather disturbances every time? I should messing everything up, but I’m not.”

Pepper smiles, spreads the articulated fingers out in her other hand. “Science! Magic!”

“It doesn’t make sense, Pep. No damn sense. But…” she makes a final adjustment and closes the access panel. “It also feels incredible. Everything is amplified larger and I’m content. Maybe even happy.”  And how about that, that’s the feeling that been working in her gut, unfamiliar and strange. It’s happiness and nobility. “Go run the tests; fly and fire.”

Pepper nods, putting back on the suit’s helmet and heads towards the testing area in the workshop. Jane lays her head down on the workbench, thinking that even the fifteen minutes that the test take would be a welcome nap. Her body is sore from learning to use muscles she’s never had before, for all that she doesn’t look any different. Natasha’s been running her through the ringer, teaching her to fight and not just in the quick and dirty way with which she’s scrapped her way through life.

The movement of the Mjolnir is different, she’s learning to move in circles and use momentum to further impact, and how to change direction without losing that. Melee and close fighting is different from shooting a gun. When Darcy was teaching her to shoot - she realizes just how little she’s seen Darcy lately -  it was simply a case of getting her body to catch up to math and physics, her mind already knowing that she wasn’t going to escape an inevitability. But now, her body and mind and intellect don’t know how to work together; her body seems to know exactly how to move but physics shouldn’t work that way and she can’t comprehend how this is all working.

She’d spent so much time at Mjolnir’s side and never felt a hitch. Was it her declaration of intent to put her own desires of quiet aside that started the movement? No, because while it had shuddered, it hadn’t been drawn into her hand at that point.

No, it was only after she talked Darcy down, not from killing an innocent; Who could ever call that man an innocent? No, Winter Soldier wasn’t innocent but from everything they’ve learned, he deserved the chance for redemption. But Darcy would have felt no remorse at his blood in the dirt, another rotting body to add to the list of the dead. Jane can’t close her eyes to sleep when she thinks of the dead wildness in Darcy, holding that gun to the man’s head. Darcy’s been avoiding her, the only person that seems to be able to track her down is Barton. But Jane hasn’t been trying that hard to find her, so long as food appears and work gets done.

She’s gotta change that. Darcy isn’t alone. None of them are.

There’s a loud pop and whirring noise, that doesn’t sound like any of the bot children, and Jane turns around and  watches a small fissure closing and rapidly disappearing seemingly out of the air, close to the ground. A small ball rolls on the ground slowly to a stop and unfolds like a tripod, and the fissure is sucked up into it.

Jane is out of her seat, starting to kneel to examine it when a bright light shines out from  the head, like a projector. The light solidifies into something not quite solid, more like a hologram.

“Wait, I’ve got to adjust a setting, I can’t see yet and I don’t think they can see me.” That voice is unmistakable and a half second later she’s pulling her gaze up from Tony Stark’s knees to Tony Stark’s head.

“Oh, hey, hi. Hey cool, its my workshop in Malibu. Dr Foster?” He squints, and Jane is speechless. “Doc, not that it’s not cool or anything, but you are in my workshop. Why are you in my workshop?”

Her mouth is stupid. “Because I’m using it?” her voice breaks.

“Okay, more importantly, two things. One, I need to speak to me. You’ll probably be a big help to, hey Steve!” His head turns slightly out of frame now, and that’s freaky. “Get Foster to the tower, will you. More brains on this the better.” He turns back, his full body once again viewable, “Two, you wouldn’t happen to have a couple of things of ours. One is about yea high, red hair, can kill you with her pinky. The other has a bow and speaks fluent bro.”

Tony Stark is staring at her and expecting a response. It is at least several seconds before she can slowly give an instruction to Jarvis. “Jarvis, please send an urgent note for everyone to come to the workshop.”

“Oh!” Stark nearly squeaks, “Is this a universe where I’m a girl? I’d be a hot woman, don’t give me that face Capsicle, you’d hit that if I were a girl. “

Jane feels like she’s getting whiplash, because she turns her head again to see Pepper, helmet still on, returning from the test, slowing to a halt. Her voice is still modulated by the suit, “This isn’t funny, Jane.”

“Is this something I would joke about?” Jane snorts, gesturing her to take off the helmet.

Pepper removes RESCUE’s helmet, letting it fall as she covers her mouth with her hand, and says in a tight voice, “Tony?”

“Oh wow, I have got to make Pep one of those,” Tony says. “When I get to the workshop, I’ve got to get myself to tell me everything about that suit.”

“You don’t understand, Stark.” Jane starts but Pepper interrupts, her voice trembling and not attempting to hide her watering eyes.

“You really don’t.  You’re dead here, Tony. There isn’t a you coming, you died around a year ago,” Pepper says, slowly  lowering her hand. “There’s just us here.”

 


	8. Chapter 8

“We can only see you Tony.” Natasha takes a chair and slides it over so that she’s sitting to his right. Clint and Darcy are not far behind her, coming in at each others heels, and Natasha stifles a groan, because he’s literally on her heels like a puppy and that stopped being cute years ago. They split apart when Darcy lays eyes on the light-filled almost supersaturated figure of Stark, she chooses to stay out of sight. Clint stands beside Natasha, an apple in hand, and hands over a pear to Natasha. Comice. She approves. “How much can you see?”

“Anything within my field of vision. I’ve rigged an output from the optics so that Steve and whoever else shows up can watch.” Stark’s field of vision though, is focused still on Pepper, her suit, and Jane. Jane’s tinkering with an open panel on Jane’s shoulder.

“What the hell happened?” Clint crosses his arms and shifts his weight over a hip, feigning boredom, but he’s not, she can see it in his eerily calm hands and his steady scrutiny of the hologram.

“Now, it’s not very often that I say this, so listen very carefully: I have no idea. We found three more of the devices that triggered whatever the hell happened. We triggered one by mistake, but found out that it went to a single point in another universe, but could be targeted.”

“How’d you find us?” Natasha asks.

“Barton has a tracker arrow,” Tony points out.

“Told you it was useful,” Clint interjects. “Wait, why is it on? I don’t keep it on, that would be bad.”

Darcy stirs from her spot behind the tech. “Um, did you just pick up the signal? Like two days ago?” Clint goes a little red at the back of his neck, “I uh, kicked your quiver. When we were sparring then.” Darcy is not good at covering these tracks of hers, at least not to someone like Natasha, and she’s going to have to have a talk with Barton. She passes her pear from hand to hand.

“Yeah well, there’s a problem. There’s always a problem, you —” Stark listens to someone off screen, his head tilted and bobbing to whatever the other person is saying, “I’m getting to the point, Steve. Do you all have a…no, if you had one, he’d be there. Never mind, I probably don’t want to know.” He looks again at Jane and RESCUE, at Peppers hair as it flows over the other shoulder from where Jane is working. Jane doesn’t have spare moments, not even now. “Foster, that red ….put it, right, there. Good. Oh, I see how I did it, I’m very good.”

“Stark,`” Natasha says simply. “The problem.”

“Right, the problem.” Tony refocuses, shaking his head and his body, all barely contained energy and racing thoughts and turns back to  Natasha and Clint, “Can someone kneel down and touch the yellow button on the side?” Darcy’s closest, so she sighs and follows the instructions. “The devices are one time usages only, weakening the, you know, I’m just going to call it science, even though there’s a lot more to it, but science is enough of a word. We think we have a way to keep the fissure it creates open and big enough to get you two through but….”

“Oh gross, what did you send us, vomit? That’s so not cool, Stark. Not cool at all, are you not over that drinking until the world goes black thing where you are from,” Darcy babbles, rolling herself away from the section of the device that opened up, and winds up within the projections field of vision. Stark looks down at her, and it’s like Darcy finally remembers that she practically lives in SHIELD issued cargos and a tank top. She stands up quickly, with an arm over her cleavage, scowling at Stark.  An arm reaches appears in the beam of light, and pulls Stark’s head back up from the leer. Some things apparently don’t change from universe to universe. Steve Rogers helping Tony Stark get his mind out of the gutter by physical means is one of them. Well, probably would be, if things had gone differently.  “Whatever, I got work to do.” Darcy doesn’t spare a glance back at the projection or anyone before leaving the workshop. Clint keeps his body still, but his eyes are watching her.

“Right, yes. That would be the problem. We didn’t know if we were going to be able to get organic material to work through them. When the trip is instant when it’s first triggered, it’s stable. Thats how you got through. Any thing that keeps it open….”

“Suffers a decay rate,” Jane says, some sort of tool in her teeth. “Did you adjust for….” She mumbles through words but Stark evidently understands them and they start to discuss, well, in Stark’s own terms: Science.

It’s not all over Natasha’s head, but it’s white noise. Instead, she watches the way that everyone interacts and how Pepper is steadfastly not looking at Tony. Tony’s beginning to alternate whether he’s talking suit design or the universe traveling device, and Pepper sharply looks up and bites, “Tony, focus.”

And Tony does, just as if it were his own Pepper, and continues. Pepper though, is unruffled now, smiling primly and fondly. Natasha bites into her pear, and it’s sweet against her tongue. Clint’s nearly done with his apple and he throws the core through Tony.

“Sorry, I really had to do that.” He rubs his neck. “ I have impulse control problems apparently.” That doesn’t even deserve a response. Not even Tony responds to that, because it’s so glaringly obvious that they’ve covered all the responses by now. For a moment, it’s almost like being home. Then Stark walks out of frame, until only an arm, a shoulder is visible, and it’s nothing like being home.

* * *

 

Clint does wish that he could follow the crazy talk sometimes, but it goes over his head. He’s just more of an actiony guy, not a make plans and think ahead sort of guy, and he fidgets while the science is being done. He really doesn’t know how Natasha stays so still when there isn’t an objective to keep in sight.

He settles for watching Natasha eat the pear he grabbed for her on the way down, her fond exasperated expression. At least, until Darcy is running into the workshop, tablet in one hand and fixing an earpiece into the other, and he’s up out of his seat.

“Pepper, Jane,” She says, almost out of breath. “Are you almost done with the suit?”

Jane breaks her conversation with Stark saying, “Yes. Pepper, move your shoulders, are they smoother now?” Pepper does so and nods.

“Great,” Darcy is filled with a focused mania, “We’ve got a duress pickup beacon coming from SHIELD 4.” She taps her tablet then throws up a display with a map.

“We haven’t heard from them in what, three months?” Pepper asks.

“Who’s SHIELD Four?” Clint asks at the same time.

Darcy looks over at both of them. “Yeah, about that much time. They are about 50 miles south, requesting pickup. I’ll stay here to coordinate, should be a good one for Jane to spread her wings.” She turns to face Clint. “Four is an intelligence team established a few months before SHIELD went under.  Two assets and a handler, and they’ve been our most reliable source of information ever since. Monthly check-ins, except for the last few months. We’ve been worried so….”

“And you don’t think thats a trap,” Tony interrupts from where he’s watching. Apparently, someone gave him a stool and now he’s sitting on it and trying to point to Darcy to get her attention. “Hey, Lewis, that just screams trap.”

“You are not here,” Darcy rolls her eyes. “You don’t really have a stake in panda-fucking at all. Barton, I want you to run through pre-flight on the jet, just in case we need it. But our fliers should be able to handle it since it’s this close.”

“I’ll go get changed,” Jane says, getting up from her stool, trying to move quickly before Darcy and her sly smile, could start a gentle round of teasing. She fails utterly.

“What, no transformation sequence this time?” Darcy laughs, spinning the display screen around, and hands a second earpiece to Jane as she walks by.

Jane takes that in the humor it was intended, and there’s a lighter touch to the way she moves now. It’s still serious, she’s still Jane, but at the same time, he can see the subtle touch of Thor in her, a inborn nobility that has transferred into grace.  “I am not a magical girl, Darcy.” She sighs dramatically, looking back at her amused.

“The light show that it took for you to get a new outfit says otherwise.” Clint has seen this Darcy before, this is the one he knows. Witty, light with just a hint of bite, but it’s gone in an instant from her face; this is just a mask fueled by circumstances, and underneath it, he sees how tired she is, how much staying back is a reprieve for her.

There’s no chance of almost screwing up like she did, killing like she would have, if she’s handling from a distance.

“What do you say, Tony, would you and your studio audience like to see a show?” Her lip curls up in an approximation of a smile. Tony looks up and is listening to people talking behind him, nodding quickly. “We need to entertain our guest, after all.”

“No,” Jane stubbornly disagrees, “I am not a party trick. Besides, this?” Jane turns to a nearby table that’s well within Tony sight, and she bends at the waist with an outstretched hand and pulls up Mjolnir to rest against her shoulder with ease, “That’s enough of a trick for anyone.”

“Pick your jaw up, Stark,” Natasha quips, not even needing to look straight at Tony, because there really is only one reaction to the sight of Jane Foster picking up Thor’s hammer as easily as he does. “And Steve’s too.” Stark spends the next minute having a quiet, for him, at least, moment of hysteric shock.

“So what do you call you? Thora? Thorina? Thordis?” He guesses, gaining back his momentum, “Thorella?”

The armor fades in around Jane, and she quickly removes the cape. They’ve sparred and fought with and without it, but Jane really dislikes it, saying that it looks more like a costume than something practical. But the armor is beautiful and has made itself into a form more fitted for a woman without being immodest or just plain stupid.

“I do not need to rename myself,” Foster announces as she pulls her hair back, “I am through mourning. Ready?” She turns to Pepper, who has pulled on her helmet. She nods.

Darcy moves them to a small room off the edge of the workshop, chattering on the way about maps and directions. Clint can see her from where he is, and she surrounds herself with screens and displays, pulling up more and more information.

He watches as she closes her eyes, takes a few deep breathes, and when she opens them again, the entire paradigm around her has shifted. The chaos that envelops her is made whole, and she is not just in control of it, but part of it. He’s not paying attention to Stark or whoever is playing the light show now, and instead watches as the lost and haunted look to Darcy’s eyes be slowly replaced by will and grit.

* * *

 

“Alright,” Darcy says. She’s mostly been quiet as Jane and Pepper fly out to meet the distress signal, partially because Jane finds it difficult to talk while flying. And that is totally never going to get old. Jane flies. She flies by swinging a hammer around super fast and then there’s MAGIC. “RESCUE, I’m sending you the floor plan for the storefront that SHIELD Four is broadcasting from. Three levels, bottom floor is autoparts, office space above. Please don’t blow anything that could explode, it would be very unhelpful.”

“I don’t generally blow things up that don’t need to be exploded Lewis,” Pepper responds, a hint of a smile in her voice and Darcy watches as the JARVIS interface expands on two screens. Her personal pinned map, and the internal RESCUE feed.

Another program beeps, and several security camera feeds dot a large screen behind her. Darcy turns, and theres a reason for how quiet she is, everything demanding her attention should really be the work of a dozen people running the scene work for an op. Phil explained how there would be communications, research, tactical, people that could run all the work for her and a single voice articulating it all, but she needed to know how to do all of it, by herself. You never knew what circumstances you’d find yourself in. Darcy shakes her head as she sorts through the cameras, searching for the familiar faces of SHIELD Four. She doesn’t know the assets well enough, and they were good because they were so plain and blendable, but Sitwell? She can pick that bald head out of anywhere.

He taught her that the true mark of site evaluation wasn’t knowing every inch of that one place, but knowing everything around it about human needs. Where are the bathrooms, where do people eat? Sitwell could find a local diner and order the special in every state and most of the county in them, and not be a tourist.

She spots him on the second floor, cradling a body in his lap, one of the assets. The other, brown hair disheveled, watches over them, and scanning the room before having to back up against a wall, his face tight with pain.

“Second floor, back room,” Darcy says calmly. “At least two injured, possibly one dead, I can’t tell if they are breathing or not. Assorted Paper and Potential apparently has some really crap security cameras. They look wary, but not actively being pursued?”

“So not a trap,” Jane says, the wind nearly drowning out her voice.

“Everything is a trap.” Everything has the potential to always end up crap and sideways. Even a simply smash and grab like this can, and can end up worse if she’s not paying attention, if she misses some scrap of information. “But I just want you guys to go in and come out with all three of them. Divide them up however you’d like.” Darcy finagles her way into the physical controls on the camera, makes it dance for a moment.

It catches Sitwell’s eye, and he tilts his head the other direction, but he doesn’t move his gaze at all. What would he know….she goes with the old standby and jerks the camera side to side, a series of short and long movements, spelling her name out in morse code.

Sitwell digs in his pocket, a suit that’s seen better days, and holds up a flashdrive and he makes a show when he puts it back into an interior pocket on his jacket.

“Heads up, no matter what happens, Sitwell’s got usb drive for us. You should be getting close about now. There’s roof access and a nice wide stairwell.”

And it’s so fucking clean, the way it goes down. She follows the action, camera by camera and Jane and RESCUE make their way, so quietly and with a fidelity and surety of movement.

There’s no shoot-out, just a confirmation that Specialist Schneider is dead, Specialist Rodriguez is injured but not seriously, an Sitwell is, well, he’s Sitwell and eerily calm about the whole thing. It’d be thrilling heroics if it weren’t for the realization that they’ve lost the last trained cryptographer from SHIELD.

The whole somber group is back and passed out in guest rooms within an hour, and Darcy’s still in her warroom, running alternative scenarios for hours.  She looks out into the workshop and has to look away at the man that Clint’s talking to. Not hers, not hers, not for her anymore.

* * *

 

Clint doesn’t realize he’s fallen asleep in the workshop until he wakes up to a familiar voice, almost too quiet in his ears.

“Barton, report,” Coulson says, and Clint’s been here too long, because he feels like he sees a ghost, the holographic light hazy as Phil steps into it.

“Help, I’ve been sucked into the world’s crappiest universe, and I can’t get out?” he tries, rubbing the sleep from his eyes and scans the room. Tasha’s gone and Darcy is still out in the other room, decidedly less screens now, but they play the same things over and over.

Phil must be alone, he looks at Clint and grimaces, the sort of full faced, over the top expression that he only gives when he can be at ease. “How you holding up?”

“It’s a nice place to visit sir, but I wouldn’t want to live here,” he replies without sarcasm. He quickly sketches out the specifics, some things they’ve already told Tony, but more the things that might be useful to SHIELD. Details about how the Helicarrier went down are grim and short on the ground, but far too useful not to include. “Honestly sir, I’d almost stay here just to even the odds if I didn’t feel like I parachuted into Oz.”

“And Natasha?” There’s an unspoken question, and what if we can’t bring you back?

“I’ve never doubted her ability to adapt, sir.” He snaps his fingers and stands to find a tablet, hitting the screen until he finds the file he needs, “Reminds me. Where do we know this man from?” He holds it up in front of the projection, an enhanced picture of James, the Winter Soldier, taken from RESCUE’s camera footage.

Phil looks at the photo, and he has just a small tell, right at the neck where the color runs out, “I…who is that?”

“We’ve never been able to get a good look in our universe at Winter Soldier, but this is him here. Best intel I can give you on anything here, sir.” He looks over at Darcy, working away, the haunted look returning to her, and she’s too damn thin, and there’s scars all over her, “That and …I don’t wish this life on her, but you might want to take a look at Lewis, sir. She’s got some steel to her.” He covers his chin and cheek with a hand, “But don’t you dare force her into SHIELD if she doesn’t want it. God, Phil, you trained her here, less than a year and she’s someone I’d be proud to have at my back. All of them, honestly. They might actually function better as a team than the Avengers. They are all just fucking crazy, that’s all.”

Phil nods and is still staring at the tablet screen, and even through they’ve got to be recording it on their end, Clint knows that look, Phil is razoring that face into his memory as if he’d look away now, it’d be gone forever.


	9. Chapter 9

It’s really anti-climactic. Pepper makes some calls and arranges for a sympathetic contact in one of the alphabet government agencies to take care of Schneider’s remains, contact the family for them. Jane knows how much Jasper would like to do it himself, but it’s too risky if they want to keep their cover going. There’s no doubt that Sitwell and Rodriguez will go back out there, diminished to just the two of them, and still pull miracles of information out of their asses.

Pepper also has arranged for food. Lots of it, all of their favorites. Jasper loves food and like them all, he’s too thin and obviously not eating as well as he should. Although Jane does not remember  him having that that much muscle from their time in New Mexico Sitwell has been eating constantly during while he’s been here. Sleeping and eating, two great pleasures Jane has not had enough of either.

“Foster,” Sitwell nods, taking a seat. Rodriguez is sleeping off injuries in a guest room. “It appears god-hood agrees with you.”

“Please don’t remind me,” Jane admits, patting him on the shoulder as she walks around him at the table. “I went to adjust the shower head this morning and tore it off. I forget sometimes that I’ve got, like, mystical magical girl muscles or something.”

“How does it work?” Sitwell asks, and Jane just throws him a baffled and bewildered expression. “Right. We waiting on anyone?”

“That depends, what did you find for us?” Jane answers, dropping into a seat. “Science-y or fight-y?”

Jasper considers for a moment and cleans his glasses. ”Science-y, at least to start. It’s a power source.”

“Blue? Glows? A little unstable?” Jane ventures.

“So you’ve heard of it? Good that makes this part easier. We’ve heard it called all sorts of things, mostly cosmic cube or Tesseract, both of which are silly names if you ask me, but  you aren’t because you are looking at me and I’m guessing it’s Tesseract, right?” Jane raises her eyebrows in response to Jaspers stream of thought. “Okay then. Good news or bad news first?”

“Bad news, I’m not sure if I’m allowed to react to good news in a happy way.”

“It’s been recovered. By HYDRA, but it’s only a small cell that has it right now, working as independently as HYDRA allows.”

“There’s good news to counter that?”

“Well, we know where it is and who has it. Tell me, how soon can you get to New York City? All of you? No wait, that’s more Lewis’s department. How do you know about the power source?”

“We have some guests from….it’s a little hard to explain, but they should be here in a minute, and….”

Jasper suddenly pales, as if he’s seeing a ghost, reaching for a weapon that he doesn’t have strapped to him, because this is supposed to be a safer place and he never carries at the mansion. But Jane can see that he’s shaking, “No….”

Natasha is already through the door and halfway to a chair. “I’m sorry we’re late.  We had to wait for Darcy to sit with the manic man in the basement.”

“Hey Sitwell, glad to you didn’t die here,” Clint says, far too cheerfully, “I was hoping someone I knew from work didn’t kick it.”

“You two are dead.” Sitwell says flatly, “Who the hell are you?”

Jane really does try to explain, but Jasper doesn’t stop looking at the pair without suspicion, frowning every time they look at him, and there’s innocent phrases and gestures that Clint and Natasha makes that cause Sitwell to show his tells. He never relaxes as they explain the tesseract, an alien invasion and a power source that can open doors and connect points in space.

Jane has never seen Sitwell so unnerved.

“I’m sorry,” he finally says, “if Dr Foster says you are from another universe, I should believe it. But I was there at your funerals, and if you say one thing about brains, your heads are coming off.”

“Right, Sitwell and the zombie apocalypse,” Clint lays his head down on the table. “I really should have seen this coming.”

“Where are you off to next?” Jane asks. Sitwell always works independently of them, but always has a knack for  finding the best information and exactly what they need just as they need it.

“I’m thinking we’ll head to the midwest. I caught wind of something hinky last when we were in Chicago. We can do some good there.”

“And?”

“I really want a proper italian beef, no one does them right anywhere else,” Sitwell explains, and Jane actually thinks his cravings are some sort of advanced warning system for his brain. Whatever he’s hungry for, it’s where the goods are.

 

* * *

 

“Are we ready?” Pepper asks, standing off to the side, trying to keep out of immediate sight. She’s down here because it seems the place to be, because if this works, she wants to thank Clint and Natasha for everything. She wants…there’s a lot of things she wants and won’t get.

Seeing Tony for one last time, even if he isn’t hers, even if he belongs with some other Pepper. One that takes care of him, his company, but not his legacy. She doesn’t ask, she doesn’t want to, she’s got enough things to worry about. But, oh, looking at Tony has never been a hardship even when his actions were.

Darcy is standing off to the back too, out of the way, behind the projection. Curiously, she’s stroking the butt of one her guns, holstered on her thigh, looking wary and diminished with dark circles under her eyes. But Jane and the strays are working and standing right in front.

“All clear here,” Jane says, punching a few buttons. “Got the last of the calculations right here. “ She holds up a tablet in front of Tony, letting his video feed capture it.

“Bruce, you got that?” Tony says, turning out of frame.

“How’s this gonna work?” Clint asks, crossing his arms.

Tony turns back into frame. “Simply put, we’re going to shut down this connection, it’s too small to get you two back through, and we need to change a few things.  That’ll take about 3 minutes, and then we’re going to reopen with our last device. It’ll create a hole big enough, but only for about a minute. You send through whatever organic critter you’ve got, it comes back whole and alive, and you don’t walk through until we roll the confirmation back. No ball, you don’t walk through. Don’t even try,” Tony talks with his hands and points at Clint at the end. “We don’t want you two becoming organic mush.”

“Why are you looking at me?”

“Who in this room is impulsive and eager?” Darcy says under her breath, but she’s heard by everyone. Natasha perks her eyebrows, Clint scowls at Darcy fondly and walks over to her, wrapping his arms around her shoulders. He whispers something to her, Pepper can’t tell what, but Darcy’s nodding shortly and seems to take comfort in his embrace.

Natasha walks over to Darcy too, puts a hand on her, something she’s learned is akin to a great gesture. And that’s the start of it all, there’s hugs and handshakes and gratitude all around, please tell Rhodey the same, all of that. But then there’s one more scenario that may happen and Natasha drops her guard just a fraction, “Stark, is everyone with you?”

“All Avengers and Agent Coulson. He’s really looking forward to getting you two properly debriefed and I don’t think he even means that in a dirty way.”

“If this doesn’t work….” Natasha continues as if Tony never started talking. Natasha’s told her that she worked undercover for them at Stark Industries, before there were Avengers or aliens, and Pepper thinks she would have enjoyed that, another person who could herd Tony effectively, “It’s been an honor, and I think I would miss you.”

Clint ends up next to her, swallowing, “I never thought I’d appreciate a team so much.”

“We’re going to get you back, kids,” Stark says, and then someone has shoved him out of the way and a big guy, blonde — Captain America, the remnants of Pepper’s high school education supplies.

It’s almost like he walks through the projection, he’s got that much presence in that body of his and a boyish smile that looks like it could start on a small figure and just expand. “Natasha, the Winter Soldier, tell them there — oh they can all see me? —He’s James Buchanan Barnes, he’s Bucky. Please, try to help him.” Pepper doesn’t register a Barnes, but that history class was a long time ago. JARVIS will remember for her. “And, good luck to everyone. You all seem up for whatever is thrown at you.”

Tony fights his way back, needling in front of Captain America, and he rubs his hands together and claps. “Okay then so, Steve Rogers pep talk Is over, good job Cap, let’s do this!”

“Wait!” Pepper surprises herself by shouting. Tony looks at her, like she’s his Pepper and she involuntarily smiles. She’s missed that attention. “Will you indulge me for a moment?”

“For a Miss Potts? Indulging is something I’m happy to do.”

Darcy and Jane duck their heads, looking away, Clint and Natasha follow and Pepper bites her lip, “My Tony ran off without telling me, and I never got to say goodbye.” Pepper walks into the field of vision, “And I’ve worked very hard to be the sort of person that his legacy needs. But I just need one thing.” Her head feels so heavy  and her chin touches almost to her collarbone. Deep breaths, Potts, deep breaths. “I’ve just always needed to say goodbye, Tony.”

Tony always goes through complex emotions in moments, in what would take hours to express, and for most others, it’s unreadable. For Pepper, though, she sees guilt and shame, love and pride turning into affection and resolve, “Goodbye Pepper. Be…be you, because you’ve always been more than I’ve ever deserved.”

“Goodbye Tony.” She presses her lips together, doesn’t even have to hold back tears, “Let’s bring you two home, safe.”

Tony looks down, obviously working on something “Disconnecting in  three, two, one…” and the projection is gone. She’ll never see him in this place again.

It’s a very long three minutes, and Clint holds a tiny mouse, the type bought to feed snakes and puts it into a what looks like a high tech version of a hamster wheel.The portal opens again, becoming stable much larger, although when they walk through it, Barton is going to need to duck.

He kneels, rolls the ball through, and they wait. They don’t set a timer, they don’t stop breathing, they just stay quiet and wait. The fissure burns brighter this time, turning red at the edges until it collapses into nothingness.

“Well, shit.” Clint announces, his face falling into despair, and that’s a really good summary of the situation.

* * *

 

Darcy finds Clint on the roof, picking up loose bits of debris and throwing them to land in the water, “You show that water who’s boss, Barton.” She picks up a piece of loose gravel and throws it in time with his own swing. His goes farther, but she doesn’t slack either. He doesn’t seem to be aiming for anything in particular, she aims to disrupt his swing. “Hey, I’m sorry you —”

“No you aren’t.” Clint picks up another rock and walks away. “You wanted me to stay anyways.”

“Do you blame me?” The wind is stronger up here, and Darcy flicks the elastic on her wrist, playing with it before she captures her hair to pull it back. “I like having a couple of dependable people around, I like you both, too. I need good people.”

She hadn’t realized how late it was. It had been afternoon when they sat in the workshop, just in case Stark had been able to pull something out of his ass, but that never came. Natasha left first, feigning that she was hungry, and Darcy had watched Clint storm off to parts unknown. She left him alone for awhile, but when he hadn’t come down when she made dinner, she went looking for Clint.

“Yeah well, you’ve got us. Got a couple more bodies up for this fucking universe to slaughter.” Clint puts his hand on her shoulder,trying to turn her around. He wants to look her in the eye, wants to challenge Darcy to say that no, that’s not what the reality she lives in is like.

Darcy knows better. “Look, you are here for good. We can try to set you two up somewhere, create you new identities, try to live normal lives. Average people have no idea what is lying beneath the surface right now, just waiting for the right moment to strike. This alliance between HYDRA, AIM and more organized crime? It’s going to open the world up and swallow everyone down. But you could live a normal life until that happens.”  She has no height on Barton, but she’s small and mighty and can pull herself into an impressive coldness. Phil taught her that. “Or you can work with us and try to stop that.”

“Is that what you are doing? Or are you putting out fires and fueling your revenge fantasies, Lewis?” Clint curls his lip, getting her to turn around finally, grabbing both her shoulders now, trying to look down into her eyes. He’s been trained by Coulson too, she remembers and they can use the same tricks on each other until they have nothing left except themselves.

“It’s what I’ve got Clint,” she says, breaking eye contact. “What else can I hold onto?”

“At least you belong here,” Clint rustles in place. “You have that to hold onto. I have Natasha and she’ll slip into a new skin like it was always hers. I’m not like that. What can I hold onto Darcy?”

He pulls her in to kiss her roughly, he must not have shaved lately, stubble against her skin  Darcy slaps at his hands, because yeah, she likes Clint, but she’s the one that started this in anger. She doesn’t want everything they do colored by their combined rage.

“We’re heading to New York in the morning. Be on the jet or not with your things. Decide what you are going to hang onto, Clint.” She does however, relent enough to kiss him on the forehead before she leaves. She likes him after all, and he needs to know where she’d like to lead him.


	10. Chapter 10

Clint fingers the strapping on his quiver, strong and supple and able to keep up with him throughout all of his twists and turns. SHIELD developed the quiver for him, kept him in arrows, let him fuss around their labs and come up with the most wacked up designs for arrowheads that he could muster.  There wouldn’t be any more of that.

“Clint.” He hears his name, can hear Natasha, who didn’t even blink when he gave her their options, she just suited up. It’s the life that she knows, after all, what she’s good at. She’d be no good at what? Office politics or condo associations, whatever normal people do here. “Clint,” she repeats, “Are you going to sit in just your pants and make sexual advances towards your gear all day, Clint?”

“No…no of course not,” he replies, dropping the quiver and, and what? What is he going to do. It’s the stupidest question ever, because of course, he’s going to stay with Natasha, his only lifeline to the way he knows things to be. But eventually Natasha will adapt, free of the ties that bound her to her old life, her debts that are barely able to be repaid, and she won’t be his Natasha anymore. She’ll slip into the role of this worlds Natasha like the years never happened and it’ll be, it’ll be good for her. Free and not beholden to anyone except those she wants to be. “I’m just thinking.” He smirks, holding down the thoughts that she can read better than he can.

Clint’s not sure he can let go of the past as easily as she will. The past is so much with him. He hates it, but he’s nothing without it.

“Don’t strain yourself.” Natasha hands him his undershirt. “You’re sleeping with Darcy?”

“We haven’t gotten to the sleeping part yet.”

“Oh, so fucking Darcy.” She lofts, lifting the rest of his uniform off. “That’s a real improvement.”

“She’s a good and messed up kid. I know how that is, I’m not saying this is the best idea I’ve ever had, but —“

“Don’t call her a kid, Barton.” Natasha shoves the tough and flexible fabric into his hands. “One, because you are having sex, calling her a kid is just unseemly; two, she’s not a kid at all. She’s a woman grown and having trouble figuring out how to be the person she wanted to be and how to use the skillset that Coulson saw in her and be the type of hero you can be.” Clint twists up his lips and mouths the word hero. “Yes, Clint, hero. He was just training her to be him,  but she’s had to take on what what you do instead.”

“What, not you?” Clint throws it back, defensively.

Natasha, when she really smiles, is feral. She can fake all sort of expressions, but she can’t hold back her real wildness. “No one else can be me. She started too old and she’s too distinctive. But you? Good aim, good heart, smart, and flexible? Shut up.”  She doesn’t laugh when Clint mock preens at her words. “You already know this about yourself. She doesn’t and she’s losing sight of herself in the process. She’s trying to be you and Coulson at the same time, because that’s really what he wanted, someone who could fill both roles if needed, and she doesn’t know how to be Darcy too. Not yet.”

Natasha is much better at reading people than he is. He looks down at his uniform, the SHIELD logo on it, on Natasha’s suit as well. He shrugs it on in a smooth movement, fastening and tightening where it needs it and twisting his torso to stretch, and cracks his neck.

What else does he have if not Natasha, his memories and the ability to move forward? “Right, let’s go.”  Clint’s ready in moments, arms, ammunitions and the man.

  
  


Darcy lifts and eyebrows and smiles with smug self-satisfaction as Clint takes a seat next to her in the Stark Industries charter jet they are taking to New York in the guise of Pepper needing to take some meetings across the country. She’s on her cell. “No, James, I promise. This time we’re actually going to be at the tower. The penthouse is all ready for us. Might be a bit cramped, though, the strays are going to end up being with us for awhile.  Right, see you for dinner then.”  She clicks it off and looks straight ahead. “Barton. Glad you could join us.”

Her voice is tight, but her body isn’t. She’s gradually loosening up, relaxing into her seat, and Darcy’s eyes dart over to him several times.

“Babe. I wouldn’t miss this for the world.”

 

* * *

 

Pepper does not like it when James is late. Does not like it that he has to ask permission to help save the world, even if it is in ways that are still higher than eyes only. James needs to work with her and not for…but the Air Force has been his life. It’s been his rock and foundation, and she can’t fault that. S, she faults that he’s late today until the very moment that he walks into the tower.

“Suits in the van. I’ll get it moved over later.” Rhodey says his boots landing heavy against the tile. “I would have flown in, but I sort of had to keep a low profile.”

“How do you manage to keep a low profile, what did you say to your bosses this time?”

“A meeting with the head—“

“Of Stark Industries.” Pepper finishes in synch with her friend. “That’s not going to work forever, James.”

He waves her off, again, as he’s done a hundred times before, “What’s the situation now. Lewis said that the strays are permanent fixtures now? What happened?”

Pepper purses her lips together, closing her eyes. Hearing and seeing Tony again was rough in her mind, but it was also oddly comforting, “The…other side attempted to reclaim them. It didn’t work.”

“By other side you mean their Stark, don’t you?” Rhodey sighs, and leans up against the wall to steady himself as he takes off his boots. “Unless they have another asshole genius there.”

“No, it was him. Finally found himself something he can’t fix, I guess.” Pepper watches as Rhodey undoes each boot, and drops it to the floor. He ditches the socks and Pepper continues, “We got a visit from Sitwell, and that’s really the important part. We will continue to work with Clint and Natasha, and the help is nice. More hands make light work. Sitwell had information regarding the Tesseract, who has it, where it is….”

“And more importantly, what it’s going to be used for!” Darcy bounces into the kitchen, Jane at her heels, wearing a grin. It’s not an actual good grin. It’s piercing and shark-like. “Sitwell collected the data, but let’s face it, he can’t tell the periodic table from a kitchen table.”

“Darcy!” Jane interjects, dropping her jaw.

“What! He can’t. There was a reason he was nowhere near R & D and did fieldwork instead. He’s great at that end, mind is awesome, but….” Darcy shrugs. “We’re better.”

“Barton told us that the Tesseract can function as a doorway through the universe, and generates a lot of power. We think HYDRA only knows about the latter part, what they wanted to use it for at first, but they’ll figure the rest out quick. They aren’t total slouches.”

“Not complete, no. But now they have more and better horrible things to power,” Rhodey says as Darcy starts pulling up a couple of screens. The screens explode in a series of schematics and plans. Between Pepper and Rhodey, they have years of experience working with weapons, and this one looks nasty, “Sitwell had this?”

“After a fashion. It was an encrypted file piggybacking in pieces. Whoever Jasper got it off? I think he’s missing a head now. That’s okay, they probably have more  now. How do they recruit so many so quickly? Do they have a really good dental plan or something?” Darcy answers and shakes her head. “Never mind, that’s more of a rhetorical thing. Anyways, we also have the time and location of the handoff between the cells. We’ve got three days. Let’s make the most of it.”

“I don’t have two days.” James walks over to the display, and pinches down a section and enlarges the known handover location. “I’ve got to report back to base day after tomorrow. Brass wants to run some tests with the armor.” James moves on his bare back heels with uncertainty, a tell he forgets he has.

“What sort of test, Rhodey?” Pepper asks. It doesn’t make sense, that’s what. Air Force ran a million tests with the suit in the past two years, but most of them were at Rhodey’s leisure. “What sort of test do they need to run that you can’t reschedule.”

“The sort where they have to work around another Colonel’s schedule.”

Pepper does not have control of her emotions for a full, long moment and Jane and Darcy read her face, and she can feel how tight and narrow it is, and they make excuses to get out of the room. She used to get flustered when confronted with new situations, ones more dangerous than kicking out a conquest or fending off a persistent vendor. Now, she pulls herself in and closes off, crossing her arms.

“What sort of test are you running that requires….”

“Flight test. Not mine.” Rhodey stands up straighter, doesn’t meet her eyes and has to look over her shoulder. “She’s a pilot, a good one. They just want to see how another person handles War Machine, that’s all. Pepper it’s not what you think, not like that!”

“Not like what? They want War Machine, the suit belongs to you, not the military. And if you weren’t in it, then it belongs to me and Stark Industries. The Air Force has no business trying to put another person in it, no matter who qualified a woman she is.” She chews on her lips for a moment, pinches the bridge of her nose. “James, no. This isn’t how…you’ve got your twenty years in right?” Rhodes turns away from her, but he nods, “Come work for SI. You can’t serve two masters. You can’t serve them when they have competing interests.”

“They aren’t always competing, Pepper. We want to do what’s good for the world, keep her safe, right? The military…”

“Wants to control it’s assets.” Pepper twists around so that she’s in front of James and levels her gaze at him. “It doesn’t give a shit who is in it, so long as the suit is there’s.”

“Pepper I can’t just quit. I have given my life to my country.”

“That’s fine. It’s time to give it to the world. It’s time to take on the legacy of the man who made you. Made me. Save the world with me, James, Stark’s creations and his estate.” Her voice rattles, can hear Tony speaking in whispers and tatters. “If for no other reason, than so that won’t be sullied. He would hate this, would hate the claim the military has on you. We’re weapons. Weapons with a conscience. Use yours.”

She leaves. Let James make his own decision; she’s had her peace, and now he needs to come to his own.   

* * *

 

Darcy likes Natasha. Likes that she’s quiet and smart, as opposed to loud and smart like everyone else she knows. Natasha deals in secrets, and Darcy gets that, gets what it’s like to have to hold back and keep trust with yourself. But most of all, she likes that Natasha revels in being girlie.

“You know, while you look dashing in my sweaters, why don’t we take a stroll with a credit card?” Darcy asked, watching the ravishing  smile play across Natasha’s face.

And they don’t talk about any of the obvious things, not that she doesn’t think that Natasha isn’t collecting information about her, not judging and collating. If she wasn’t, Darcy would be worried.

She gives her life up freely to her. Darcy has this choice and she’s going to make it for once. So they shop, a fine collection of the practical and the not, a pair of obscene heels because Natasha says that she needs to make Pepper proud.

“We can absorb you into our history. Make you exist, I can do that.” Darcy says, grabbing a bag from Natasha, because the woman does not need to be carrying everything, and it would look just weird otherwise. “I could fold you into SI, give you a reason to be around Pepper all the time. Clint too. A security consultant for him, maybe. He just doesn’t have the look of an accountant.”

“Nor the head for numbers,” Natasha confirms, “Not that sort. He doesn’t realize what he calculates in his head in less than a second, just says it’s muscle memory.”

Darcy laughs with Natasha and only registers her shout and shocked expression after she’s pulled back by the waist and pushed up against an alleyway wall.

“What the fuck!” Darcy screams before a hand is placed over her mouth. “Mphhmf vhm furth!” she repeats against cold metal.

“Relax,” a cynical hard voice drawls in an attempt at levity, “I’m not going to do anything untoward, I’m not even going to kill you Lewis.”

“You really aren’t.” Natasha says, a knife to the man's throat.

“Natalia….” He says, and that’s the voice of the Winter Soldier. ”Found you. It would be easy to kill her, you know. We both know all the ways, and she tried to first.”

“But you won’t.”  Natasha holds as still as a clear morning.

“But I won’t.”

He also doesn’t let her go, and she’s already struggling to keep her toes on the ground. Well, there’s one trick she hasn’t tried, hasn’t had to use since she was a little kid playing with her neighbors. She licks his hand, what’s got to be considered a hand. And it works, it always has. Why don’t people suspect that? Even if that hand is metal, it must still have fantastic sensory inputs.

What was once a deadly face contorts into something more freewheeling, as he swears and shakes his metal fingers before wiping them on his pants and letting her down. She didn’t really suspect that would work quite so well, but the hand has to have a decent level of sensitivity.

“What do you remember James?” Natasha is quiet and focused, moving along with the soldier as to not actually hurt him as he maneuvers Darcy back down, but still ready with her knife.

“Not nearly  enough,” he growls, “but I distinctly remember killing you, Natalia, years ago, for defecting and crimes against the state.”

“And who do you work for now?” Darcy coughs a few times, bending at her hips.  James looks at her, the anger seeping out of him. “I’m not going to kill you either, so talk.”

“No one.” Darcy and Natasha close rank on him, trapping him into the alley and he raises his hands in submission. “Ladies, I am a free and very confused man.”

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did you guys know that buying a house is time consuming and takes away precious writing time? I'm still ahead, no worries, but man, it's rough acting like an adult.


	11. Chapter 11

What other option do they have? Darcy takes him back to the Tower, gripping him by the bicep, her fingers digging in so deep, they will most certainly leave bruises on the skin. But they take him back to where they live.

For a group of people that only a short time earlier were trying to kill him, this is progress. James tugs at the clothes he stole while he made his way from New Mexico to New York, long sleeves and cargo pants, so he could blend in. James, he remembers, and it’s about the only thing he remembers about himself, is his name. But that’s not really true either, he remembers a lot of things. Remembers Natalia, who is now apparently Natasha and not dead, remembers a hundred or more perfect shots over the damn, past fifty years or so. And falling, he always remembers falling and a scream that isn’t his own.

He remembers always waking up cold and someone older or brand new in front of him, with new orders and a new target. He doesn’t remember much, but he likes this feeling of being free to make his own choices. James’ choice is to find out why this woman isn’t as dead as he remembers.

“You defected; I killed you,” He says to Natasha. She shrugs and says that’s true. “Then how are you here?” He doesn’t mean to growl, but they’ve lead him into a small contained room and Darcy disappears, and instead, there’s the little doctor with the high cheekbones, Foster, the one who changed in bright light and let him escape.

He’s going to thank her later, for keeping him alive, but before he can, Foster points to his arm and blurts out, “All that circuitry?”

He nods, slowly, not sure where she’s going with this.

Foster narrows her eyes, and there’s something very dangerous about her, something that drags her taller and fearsome as she speaks. “I’ve gotten very good with circuits. Don’t wreck my shit or I’ll wreck yours. I’ll make it so you never jerk with the stranger again.” And she walks out, leaving him alone with Natasha, whom he killed years ago in Budapest.

The silence is just as he remembers. Natasha never wastes words when silence will do. She’s not girlish, not chatty, but beautiful and competent, womanly. Always so different from the others he helped train.

“I’m not sure who has the bigger disadvantage here.” When Natasha speaks, he always listens, because if she’s talking, it’s probably important. “You, who says he doesn’t remember most of the last seventy years, or myself, who doesn’t even belong to this world. I’m Natasha Romanov, but I am not the woman you killed.”

James is sure that to Natasha, this must make sense. It doesn’t to him, because he doesn’t miss his targets. He is a hunter: targets are prey and he’s nothing if not relentless.  He watched her die, her blood staining her partner Barton’s jacket, the same man who had held Lewis back when she wanted to kill him, her eyes turning to clouded glass. He’d made it quick, he cared for her that much. He watched her die before packing up and getting out, one less Red Room graduate in the world.

Natasha is in front of him and the world leans to the absurd, because maybe he’s now the one dead or in purgatory, trying to atone for the real harm he’s done in the world.

He touches her face, needing to know that she’s real. “Then who are you? Because you are a stunning copy, do you have the same memories? How far back do they go?”

“Nothing but the bones and flesh, James. You don’t have to trust any of us. I wouldn’t.” Her hair tosses and falls, shorter than before, as her ears perk up and she turns her head to the door.

“No, I really need to see this…” This voice is authoritative, deeper than Natasha’s partner. He doesn’t recognize it, but it’s a dark black man, solid all the way through with close cut hair and a military bearing. Not a previous bearing, he’s active, for all that he’s wearing a polo and khakis. The new man stops at the door, staring at James, “I don’t believe it, Barton, but your intel is right. That’s Bucky alright.”

James jolts, another synapse breaking in his head, “Who the hell is Bucky?”

* * *

 

Jane watches the feed of Rhodey patiently explaining to James fucking Barnes, the Winter Soldier, god damn war hero, that they have no idea why he can’t remember shit before being brainwashed by the Russians in a state of something that is not quite disbelief. Three years ago, she was a post-doc at Culver, cleverly trying to get her way into a tenure-track position and not doing all that well at it. When your theories are a little out there, and you tended to scrapbook your research, that has a way of happening.

Now, there’s people from other realities, brainwashed assassins, fighting in a secret war, and now she can fly and lift heavy things. Why shouldn’t this be her life now? At least, no one is asking her when she is going to publish her next paper or laughing at her research. She looks back at the piece of War Machine she’s working on and cracks her knuckles.

Shit doesn’t fix itself and they’ve only got a few days before the handoff, even if Rhodey isn’t going to be able to be here for that. Because the Air Force wants him to share. Fuck the Air Force though. War Machine isn’t her baby, but she’s still one of the few people that can actually understand how it works. Military only adds things to it, strings it along after heavy use. She fixes it.

They want to put another person inside the suit, fine. They aren’t going to get the results they want. This suit wasn’t built for Rhodes, that’s true. It wasn’t even really built for Tony, it was built so that Tony could get someone else a suit. Tony loved Rhodes like a brother, but he never spent the time watching him the way he watched Pepper, so he couldn’t get the variables right at first. But over time, Rhodes adapted, the suit was modified, and it fits the man like a well worn glove.

So let them run tests. The only thing that it will show is that Rhodes is a good man and soldier.

* * *

 

 

You aren’t supposed to want to shoot your heroes. But Rhodes guesses that whoever told him that when he was going through school didn’t expect this. Except it’s Bucky Barnes, and he still has an itchy trigger finger when he looks at the long haired man who has killed so many good people.

He walks out of the room, leaving Bucky - Bucky! - alone again with Natasha. He’d tried to explain what they knew about the past, pieced together from two realities worth of history, although they never quite got around to admitting they weren’t a single team of people. Rhodes isn’t afraid to admit that he was wrong about those two. He’s still wary about full and complete trust in the duo, but they are a great addition, and round out skills that the women don’t have.

If he can’t be there with them all the time, those two at least even out the odds.

He doesn’t want to run tests on War Machine with Jane, doesn’t want to stalk the halls of the Tower like the military’s ghost, as if he would dare the engineers in the labs downstairs to break their mandates and deliver up to him one more gun, one more bomb, one more breakdown of Stark’s new American dream. So he settles for the couch, as he’s done numerous times before, and she’s so silent, so still that he doesn’t notice that Darcy is sitting behind a chairs until she speaks.

“What use is a weapon that can’t hold back it’s fire?” she says, her knees at her chest, and her spine a ramrod against the chairs. “If it can’t do anything but shoot, it’s actually worthless, because it kills you in the end.”

“Lewis?” He doesn’t have to actually look at her to know that whatever decent mood she had been in earlier, it’s gone now. These women. Pepper is still beyond stable, managing and mourning in measured moments. Jane is brighter than the sun now, with no sign of petering out. But Darcy….

Darcy’s been like this for ages. Since Agent Coulson never came back, since the untested went out of her, a curious naivete replaced by fury and rage. She’s still got the same wickedness, the same tease and timber of strength.  But he can’t always be in the same zip code as her without despair. Someday, she’s going to forget to hold back. Barton saved her from herself once, and she’s latched onto that boy probably for the better.

James misses Tony like a limb all of a sudden. Tony was no island, he needed people, he was just a firecracker. Beautiful and flashy and would burn you in the end.

“I’m sorry, I’m just….” She lifts her head, looking just past an overhead light. She’s just out of the reach of the light itself, and it creates shadows over most of her body. “I’m pretty sure that James, that one in the room with Natasha, the one that’s a war hero and a war criminal, was part of the orchestration on the final attack. And I don’t…I don’t know how to deal with that.”

Rhodes only met Agent Coulson a handful of times, mostly in the context of Tony being Tony and doing something rash, irresponsible and world-saving. The last few times  he was accompanied by a shadow in the form of Darcy Lewis, who was brazen and shameless in a way only the young are, but competent and learning fast.

“I think you deal with it by reminding yourself why you are in the fight to begin with. It’s alright to feel things, Darcy, it’s okay to make a bad decision. Don’t dwell, just pick yourself back up and get to work.”

“Is that working for you?” Darcy says darkly, “For someone that wants to work with us, you don’t ever want to be here. Military owns your guns, not the armor and they lease your body. Who’s got your heart, Rhodes?”

He doesn’t answer and after a few minutes she snorts and stands up, and the light falls over her hair and body, and she looks positively angelic.

“We’re all weapons, Rhodey.” There’s no lie in that, he knows what he is. “But we can chose who fires us.” The first unguarded smile he’s seen from her this trip crosses her lips, “Thank you. Thank you, really. I think I need  to get back to basics. I’m fighting because Coulson opened my eyes to a larger world, one where so many are just pawns. But if I’m going to be the bullet, I’m also going to choose pull trigger. Thank you.”

* * *

 

They start running the op that night. The handoff is taking place in an area that Clint doesn’t have a great line of sight on, so they’ll only do proper surveillance starting a day out, but they’ve got good cameras and better hacking skills. Wherever you go in the upper levels of the tower, there’s at least three feeds from cameras. They shouldn’t miss anything with that kind of monitoring. But, Murphy’s Law is absolute. Anything that can go wrong, will.

“Oh shit.” Pepper’s jaw drops when she looks up from her paperwork in the early morning. “Oh shit. I thought…”

“FUCK.” Darcy’s shout can be heard from the bedroom. Not her bedroom. She runs out, only half dressed, Barton behind her, slightly more dressed. “Sitwell got us this information. He’s never wrong, Pep. Never!”

They watch the footage as everyone starts gathering, some in their gear and some just in whatever they wear to sleep, and most avert their gaze from Darcy, who is down to a pair of tiny shorts and very little else. Because even in a crisis, they are polite like that. But she’s a quick mover, without an ounce of shame or shyness. “We’re not going to be able to get there in time.”  She segments the remaining feeds into one large square and everyone starts watching, taking notes with each other.

“What’s going on?” Natasha says over the speakers, still down in lockdown with Bucky.

“The handoff is happening now, JARVIS, put us on VOX,” Pepper answers. This is not good. If Sitwell’s been passed bad information, then he’s in danger too, there’s too many people aware of how much they depend on them. They’ll pass word somehow.

Darcy pulls one segment larger, the one with the best view. “JARVIS, record with identifiers. These three are the operational cell. The rest are HYDRA proper. Can anyone see their backup eyes?”

Clint points to two spots on a different section. “Op Cell 1, op cell 2.” And Jane find two more on the HYDRA side from where she’s watching.

The handoff happens, and they will run facial recognition next, but they get a good look at the face of the lead HYDRA agent, so something good will come of this. And then they wait as a blue light fills the room as they inspect it. Clint shudders obviously disturbed by the Tesseract, and that sends a rash of terror down Pepper’s spine. If it unnerves him by just existing, this cannot be good at all.

The HYDRA agent smiles, and it reaches his eyes, he’s just so pleased at what has been given to him. He closes the lid and tells the independent operatives that they did good work. Which must be the signal to start firing.

“Op cell 1 and 2 down,” Clint’s voice is detached and clinical, “So are the visibles.”

“Well, this changes everything,” Darcy says. “Fuck. Just….fuck. Why can’t things just go smooth?”

Well, Pepper thinks, that hasn’t happened for us in quite a long time. Why start now. She looks over at Rhodey, watching from the back of the room, focused and taking in both the action on the screen and the action in the room and he meets her eyes with resolve. For now, at least, he’s with them.  Why can’t things just go smooth, indeed?


	12. Chapter 12

Darcy has been on the phone all day, cross legged on Clint’s bed. She put a shirt back on only a few hours ago, not even realizing it was off until she started making the calls. He waits until she finishes the current call before he asks, “What are you even doing?”

“I’m cold-calling every place in Chicago that’s well known for their italian beefs.” Darcy intones as she consults a tablet, presumably for the next phone number, and starts dialing on her phone.

Clint’s done some legwork before, but this is a little new. “Why are you calling every…”

“Because Sitwell had a hankering for italian beef.” Darcy explains before holding up a finger to quiet Clint before he can speak again. “Hi, my name is Annie, and I know this is a little weird, but can you tell me if you’ve seen someone? He’s missing and I’m just trying to find my friend, and it’s silly, but he likes to spend a lot of time in restaurants and…you’ll look? Oh thank you. He’s about 5’9, kind of stuffy,  latino, bald and wears glasses. I know that describes a lot of people.” She listens to the other side talk and brightens, and there’s a real smile on her face, “Yes! His name is Jasper. He’s been in a few times? Oh thank goodness. Can you get a message to him? Tell him that Annie misses him and to be careful. Thank you so much!” She presses the end button on her phone, and her face falls again and she falls back against the pillows.

“Warning Sitwell?”

“Prearranged code. Do you know how many fucking Portillos there are in the Chicago area? Especially if you include the suburbs? Way too many.” Darcy’s hair spreads out against the pillow, framing her face. He’s pretty fond of that face, if he had to say something, and that hair. And what it’s all attached to, but he isn’t going to say anything about that. “I swear, I could smell the food over the phone. That’s just not fair, but I guess I get to live in the lap of luxury.” Her fingers inch their way up his arm, pulling him onto the bed. He lands across her body, which she seems okay with, and then adjusts and moves down so that his head is in her lap, “With better company. I guess he can have the good food.”

It’s small moments like this, when Darcy is between tasks, that he understands the ways that his old Darcy and this strangely honed Darcy are much the same person. And he understands the way that anger fills her, seeps into the marrow. But right now? She’s unguarded and only a little haunted while she strokes his hair with absent fingers.

It’s nice, too nice, and it’s only a few more minutes before she’s up again, sighing. “Well, at least he’ll be as safe as he can be now. Owe him that much, even if his info was crap.” Clint’s dumped out of her lap without any notice, his face suddenly smashed against the bed and he objects loudly. “Sorry.” Darcy suddenly goes impish and sweet, leans over and lays a wet, loud kiss against the back of his neck. “I’ve got to get working, figure out where they are taking the glowy cube to work with it, so we can, I don’t even know. We’ve got to do something though. Plans are for wimps.”

“Plans are for wimps,” he repeats, his neck still warm from her kiss. He’s a wimp too. He can’t define what they are, because he’s pretty gone from just fucking to this sweet side he gets to see of her, like he might be the only one who does see it. Sees the person behind the skill, but he’s not sure if they could or even should categorize this thing as a relationship. It’s mostly just screwed up and kind of working, so he’s just going to roll with it. For now. Because plans are for wimps.

* * *

 

None of them are really certain what to make of Winter Soldier, Bucky, whatever they are going to call him, other than he has murder eyes at times, like he’s barely holding himself in. Jane knows he’s fighting against programming of some sort. Natasha says that Winter Soldier, the one she knew, was a closely guarded secret, but helped train her. He would be frozen between missions, and has apparently been working since the fifties.

Jane gives him a little slack.

He begrudgingly starts to respond to the name Bucky, if only because they already have a James and that would get confusing.  He’ll talk to anyone, and he’s a perfectly charming man, if a little vague and unsure of who he is. But of course, that’s par for the course for the latest additions to their team. If Bucky makes it to their team ever. He doesn’t have murder in his eyes anymore, that’s a plus, and he’s no longer under lock and key.

Jane keeps searching for the energy signature that the Tesseract puts off, since Natasha says she remembers something about gamma radiation. She’s not having much luck, and it’s more likely that Darcy and Pepper, with their investigative know-how will find it first. She just doesn’t have enough resources.

She can tell enough that it is still in New York, that it is setting off readings even she can detect a few times in the past two days since they lost it. They are pretty massive, like someone is feeding it, growing it in size. When it flares, the sheer magnitude is astounding.

“It’s a doorway,” Clint tells her. He has some background knowledge that he doesn’t share easily with anyone else and will only talk in a harsh voice with no one else around. “Opens both ways, but the where is pretty indeterminate unless it’s being aimed. So….”

“So who is trying to open the door?” Jane frowns into the data, lets it wash over her. Maybe if she could just let it wander through her brain, permeate and persist until something makes more sense.

Clint shrugs. “For us, it was Loki —“

“They guy that sent the destroyer, Thor’s brother?”

“Keep saying that, he loves it. But from what happened with us? Loki’s probably happily ruling in Asgard right now, or something.  He opened the door a crack and slipped in, but his army came from elsewhere, and they had to built something pretty complex to open the sky up enough to let them through.”

Clint obviously does not like talking about this, it’s part of the story he doesn’t really want to tell, “What did they build?”

Clint raises his eyebrows, his mouth in a tight half-smile. “I don’t really know, and neither of us kept up with the science team afterwards. I…nothing was really my choice there, and Loki kept me away from the tech guys.” He holds back an from shaking his entire body. “But I’m not sure that’s what’s happening here. I think it’s more likely that HYDRA just wants a power source.”

“Still dangerous,” Jane counters, biting half of her lip down in frustration, “I don’t like puzzles, and we are missing whatever they are doing.” As a kid, Jane excelled in algebra when others struggled with it. The variable must be hunted down and found, not a stone unturned.

“There’s a lot of things out there that are dangerous Jane, you know that,” Clint rebuffs easier, now that the conversation drifts away from himself. “If we worry about all the things that could be dangerous….”

“We wouldn’t have time to fight them.” Jane grins broadly and slowly, Clint joins her.

He must have nothing better to do than sit around, because he does wait for several minutes, maybe more. Possibly he even greeted Darcy when she came in with a sandwich for Jane and left just as quickly. Jane does have a tendency to lose track of time when she’s working, but he has a steady presence.

“Tasha,” he says, oh damn, an hour later, “wants to take Bucky out. Get him out of the tower and over into Brooklyn and see if that jogs his memory.” He’s not asking Darcy or Rhodes or even Pepper this, so why…oh, Jane’s the easy one. She might be demanding, but she knows that she can be won over. Clint will follow Natasha to the ends of any world, and they’ll be each others emissaries in the areas they can’t fathom.

For a couple of spies, they can be transparent.

So, Jane considers, giving him a knowing look, and he responds in kind. They understand each other. She’d bet a dollar that he’s just as wary about this Winter Soldier as Darcy is, and that even though his trust in Natasha is absolute, trust is not commutative.

“I could see how that might be helpful. “ A thought occurs to her, a way to get him out her lab finally. “Make it a double date. Have Darcy tag along with you three.” She could use the time off, anyways, and if Bucky is worth trusting, Darcy’s going to have to stop going squirmy around him. If Clint goes just a little red in the cheeks before hightailing it out of there, well, that’s just a perk to the day.

* * *

 

“I don’t think you thought this through,” Bucky says as they walk again, through some neighborhood of Brooklyn that he doesn’t know the name of and doesn’t recognize. Nothing seems quite right, even though the buildings look like places he’s been before, but not in any real way. “I don’t remember much that isn’t better dead than red.”

This was a bad idea.

“Yeah well, I think we are full of bad ideas today.” Lewis drags her heels behind him and Natasha, grumbles her words.  He’s not looking at her, but she’s spent the majority of the trip with her arms crossed tightly and watching the sidewalk more than the buildings. It’s more what he can allow himself to do.

Natasha is as open as she has ever been, perhaps more, and he really wonders why she thinks this was going to work. His memories of what apparently was  his hometown aren’t of the fucking thirties, but of tracking down a diplomat fifteen years ago. Natasha should know that, shouldn’t she? While his memories of her burn bright, they also aren’t in order, because he’s killed her time after time, loved her even more. He still doesn’t understand how she’s even alive. He watched her die, he went back into the damn tube until HYDRA bought him.

“Try to get into the spirit of things,” Barton says and Natasha smiles at him encouragingly, “It’s not every day Brooklyn get’s their streets patrolled by three assassins and an all around bruiser.” And then there’s more of the Natasha he knows, who conveys so much in a single look.

“Two inter-dimensional strays,” Darcy points to Barton and Natasha and then to him “A twenty-something from the forties, and your all around average college dropout. We’re a real—“

“What did you say?” He asks, suddenly stopping, understanding the words that Darcy has said but not the significance. “About these two.”  He clasps both Natasha and Clint with each hand, stopping them as well.

Darcy’s eyes jump over to Natasha, disbelief clear as a day, and there’s a little bit of disgust there too. “You didn’t….these two aren’t our original Barton and Romanov. They were killed years ago. These two got here from an alternate universe and can’t go home.”

He sneers and scuffs and groans because he knew it, knew he had killed her and she was dead. This is just an impostor that is almost the same in all the ways except the one that matters. “I let you take me into your custody, Romanov.” His voice is deadly, “You don’t even give me the warranty of your truth.” She’s kept him uneven for days now, kept him feeling strange and not tethered, where nothing made sense.

This makes sense. Natasha Romanov is a liar, always has been, always will be. He grips her tighter, and Barton and Lewis yelp, Natasha’s face screwed up in pain. He doesn’t care.

“Hey buddy, take a care.” Barton says firmly, “Let her go and we can talk.”

Natasha is slack in his grip, and he knows she can free herself. She’s letting him hold her and it’s almost revolting. Not his Natasha at all. He’s starting to breath normally again, not wanting to yell on the street when the ground shakes, and there’s a thunderous sound.

“Ramapo?” Barton asks and while he’s keeping his balance, he’s also watching fragments of buildings, nothing big, but anything is going end up being bad somewhere.

A blue light so intense it almost seems solid expands outwards in a sphere, and everything is engulfed for several seconds as it grows. Bucky lets go of Barton now, and everyone has an looks horrified, faced drawn down as each person starts to pull themselves into resolve. And then, like a rubber reaching full tension,  the light snaps back inwards, at a far more accelerated rate.

He falls down to his knees, the light in his head filling in all the empty spaces, between atoms and synapses, and it hurts so much. Before he leans back on his heels and tucks his head to his knees, he sees the no one is looking at him, but rather at the focused beam jutting into the sky, burning edges tearing away at sky and cloud.

“Okay, that hole in the sky? That’s slightly worrisome.” Darcy’s voice shakes with nerves.

“Oh fuck no,” He has never heard a Natasha express such despair and fear. “Not again.”

Bucky screams and he _knows_ where he is.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My apologies for this going up on Sunday rather than Saturday. I was so very sick yesterday, and finishing my edits was the last thing on my mind. Also a heads up that next week may be late as well, because I looked at my schedule for this week and I'm spending pretty much all of my time at my dance studio in dress rehearsals for my show next Saturday. 
> 
> if you want to watch my flail about trying to write the last chapter, my show, and the mortgage, my [tumblr](http://www.twistedingenue.tumblr.com) is free to watch and laugh at.


	13. Chapter 13

 

Rhodey does not enjoy being put on hold; he likes it even less when his higher-ups are doing it every three minutes in an effort to discourage him from his line of argument. That the women need his assistance, that yes, it is a matter of national security. How about world security? That too. Everything that’s going on is far more important that wanting another pilot to test the suit.

He’s trying not to pull the ownership card. That it is, actually, his suit. Bequeathed all tight and proper, and that the Air Force doesn’t actually have any say over who gets to use it. He’s not opposed to a second pilot knowing how to use the suit, and certainly not Colonel Danvers. But it’s not theirs to test.

It’s like if Darcy tried to pilot RESCUE. It would be wrong even if it could fit. A little less so, because Tony liked Darcy, and would have built her all of the toys if he were able. But Pepper still wouldn’t like sharing. The hold music finally stops, and the general he’s working with, the one he got bounced around to that he’s never met and that he doesn’t think has ever been part of the War Machine detail, finally comes on the line.

He’s still pacing the landing pad balcony of the tower as the man starts lecturing about duty and responsibility when Pepper walks in. She’s a little worn out looking, the only other person with a day job like him, where she can’t just delegate it away. She’s had three meeting this morning all while James has been sitting on the phone with various members of the United States Armed Forces. Pepper, and he wonder how many people have called her Virginia in the past fifteen years. Her parents? Stark, even in death, is a pervasive force of nature.

With Jane down in the workshop, and the rest of the kids out for a walk, she looks too quiet. Like she’s not really alive unless her blood is moving with chaos coming into order. James ignores everything else for a moment because you’d think she’d look at peace, but she’s more lost, more diminished.

“Sir, Sir, I understand that her schedule is very booked, but so is mine….” He interrupts and looks out over the city proper, “And I need you to respect…no sir, I am not asking for a permanent reassignment, I am asking for a few days…” there’s a low rumble, and there’s plaster falling off buildings, screams and yelling from down below, and Pepper is running to the armory.

“Give me a moment sir, I think the Ramapo Fault just blew….” A blue light grows throughout the city, quickly engulfing it from a center point, “Jarvis, can you figure out where that’s coming from. No sir, I’m talking to a computer, not you.”

The light shrinks back and shoots upward into the sky, and it’s like night burns into the light blue sky, red hot at the edges and fissures  cracking out of it. “Sir, we have a situation here. I will not be there tomorrow or likely anytime in the near future.”

The crack in the sky curls and fluctuates, like a living being, even after the blue beam cuts out. He makes out just the barest of words from the flummoxed General, something about disobey orders. RESCUE bursts out of the armory, and while he doesn’t see exactly where she’s going, he knows that she’s living up to her name.

“Yeah, I don’t care now. You can call this my going AWOL; you can call this my resignation. I don’t really care, I have work to do.”

That’s it. He hangs up. Pepper needs him and he double times it down to the armory himself.

* * *

 

Darcy's shoulders slump over as she stares up into the sky, and dozens of people start coming out of the local buildings. It's the same line over and over again, "Was that an earthquake?" followed by a sharp inhale as they see what has happened in the beautiful day. The fissures are worsening, Darcy thinks, the edges harboring intense electrical storms. Clint's hands are warm on her back, he's staring up too, but his expression is more cataloging.

 

"It's not quite the same." He says slowly, "Very similar, but not the same."

 

"Different machine?" Natasha is working over a thought, she can tell, "Which is probably good in some ways. I don't think we are dealing with Loki."

 

"No, just something completely unfamiliar to us. That's...not a good thing."

 

"Good lord," A new voice calls out from above them, and Darcy's head swoops around to notice an older black woman leaning out of a window, "Did your friend get hurt in the quake?"

 

Darcy looks over at their little group, then further down to where Barnes isn't just kneeling, but bowed over with little sobs. Natasha drops down, trying to pull his face up to meet hers, but he roars, and rocks back onto his ankles and feet, his arms coming out defensively. "You lied to me Natasha."

   Natasha imperceptibly moves, just tilts her head, "I wasn't sure what you could handle. What is worse? That the dead come back, or that they come from somewhere else, James?

   James, well James just starts laughing, near in hysterics. "Oh doll, I think I understand now just how much the dead came back. I came back."

   "I was just thinking," Natasha says, standing up, extending a hand out for him to take, which he slaps away, "that you'd understand this better if your memory came back." Natasha doesn't announce her frustrations easily, and she's letting down her guard for James. It's probably the sweetest thing Darcy's witnessed in the past few months. But she's getting that antsy feeling in the back of her head and she looks back up. The fissure hasn't really changed, but who knows if that is good or bad. Faintly, she hears and sort of sees RESCUE out and about.

   "Well, you got your wish." Bucky gives them all a tight smile, getting up on his own. "And I don't trust you any more than I did five minutes ago."

     "It was a risk." Natasha’s whole body is a frozen moment, "Wait, you've got your memory back?"

   Bucky is just as tight around the eyes, in his shoulders as he was before, even laughter can’t erase years of misuse like that. “The worst part is, I think I’m better off with you than anyone else right now.”

   Above them, the same woman is still looking out the window, shielding her eyes with her hand, staring at the hole in the sky, “Oh boy, would you look at that,” she says, shaking her head, “that don’t look good at all.” She slaps the side of the window with her free hand. “I think I saw that RESCUE woman, that’ll do.”  With a final smack to the window, she closes it.

   Darcy stares, she doesn’t mean too, but she does. And she’s gobsmacked, and leans against Clint and she just starts laughing too. This is all just too much. “I’m sorry,” she giggles, and Clint’s barely keeping it together too. “I’m sorry. It’s just. RESCUE woman. She’ll fix it.” Darcy flexes her arms, “Like she’s the only one….”

   Clint wraps an arm around her waist and he’s trying to keep her grounded. Some sort of lightness sticks in her head, making room where there wasn’t any before. It doesn’t hurt, not at all, instead she feels, well it’s not relief and its not happiness. Maybe it doesn’t have a real name, maybe it’s just the final break to her, where she’s giggling mass until she dies.

   “Maybe we should go back.” Clint says, biting his lip, looking at her with concern.

   “That’s probably a good idea,” Natasha says, pulling herself back together, and holds out her hand to Barnes again. This time, he accepts with his metal arm and Natasha’s offer of, something. Darcy’s still holding down stray giggles to really tell.  “We should make sure our things are in order before we are needed.”

   “No, no, the sky is just literally falling apart, torn asunder, a million poetic things.” Darcy can hardly stop to think, and when she does, it’s just a word, mania, that she knows, “Why would we be needed?”

   They start walking back, the same way they came, and Darcy starts breathing in time to her steps,  stalling and starting, but eventually evening out until she goes blank in the brain.

   

* * *

 

 

“What do we know?” Pepper asks, her heart still pounding as she walking through the changing robots. Rhodey has a harder time with his suit, since it never got designed for the walk through unscrewing. It was a long couple of hours but it felt good to actually be doing something for the ordinary and day to day people again. Supporting the remnants of SHIELD, running ops, trying to be a secret agent and live a very public life.

It’s easier when it’s just people. When it’s using the suit to get at people trapped under rubble, assessing damage and finding the best course of action, she feels useful. It’s less about advancing the aims of SHIELD and more about the serving the world. She’s got her own sins to atone.

Darcy is laid out, starfished against the white carpeting, Clint and Natasha pouring over what honest to god looks like Wikipedia with Barnes. But Darcy is still the one that answers, her voice sounding very little like her own, just a flat monotone, “We’re probably doomed.”

“Why are we doomed?” Jane walks up off the elevator, something large and circular wrapped in a bag at her side. She looks sharply at Pepper and Rhodey. “Wait. What happened? Did the world start ending and no one came to get me? Again?”

“Did you work through the shaking?” Darcy perks up angrily, because there’s some part of Darcy that is going to always feel guilty when she doesn’t take care of Jane. Pepper gets that probably more than anyone else has any right in the world too.

Jane looks down. “Is that what that was? I was um, working on a personal project.” Jane’s fingers rap on the bundle. “It was kinda shaking itself so I didn’t realize that that was anything….” Pepper takes her by the shoulders out to the balcony. Jane’s eyes widened comically when she sees the terrible gash in the heavens.  Jane breathes one mighty breath, “I’ve seen enough of that, I think, to fill my nightmares. Fuck me, it’s like, like a world trying to breach into ours.”

Rhodey yells to Jane and Pepper, “Hey, we got a HYDRA frequency blowing up with communications, you guys want to listen or are you going to window gaze a little longer?”

Darcy has moved to an upright position, listening in as a communication frequency that they long thought compromised burst into life. It’s heavily code worded and frantic, and so full of static that there’s almost nothing that can be made out. Darcy steals the tablet that the assassins were working on. “Really? You guys are trying to catch Bucky up on current history via Wiki? He is history, maybe you should start with the Captain America shrine Phil had going. There was some Bucky stuff in there too.” She presses a few buttons and slowly, the static starts giving way to something more recognizable as words. “You were reimagined in the Sixties to be like, fifteen or some shit. Phil called it the years of Captain Pederast, but he was a bit of completionist and he had it all anyways.”

“You know, there are things you just don’t want to know,” Clint  says with a smile.

“So your brain said that in his voice too.” Natasha raises her eyebrows. “Good to know.” Right, because this is the time to make jokes. Natasha continues with a little bit more consideration, a small secret smile proudly playing across her lips. "Also, Steve's indignation at being called that."

   Bucky blinks and there's no mistaking the hope he he has, it's the plainest expression she's seen yet on him that wasn't anger, "Steve's alive?"

     Jane interrupts, "I missed more didn't I?" Pepper confirms that yes, she did, while Natasha lets Barnes down in a remarkably gentle way. Still, he's alive somewhere, and Pepper thinks that maybe Barnes will take solace where it's offered.

     Darcy shushes everyone, as the transmission finally comes in more clear than static, and even if it is their enemy, there's a horror that comes over them. There's dead and casualty listings from the backfire of their Tesseract project and a few singularly calm and authoritative voices talking about expedition forces, containment and something about a second phase of the project.

   “Second phase?” Pepper says. “What’s going to be the second phase?”

   It’s so quiet, the way that both Clint and Natasha suck in their collective breaths. Pepper knows that they are both thinking about what happened in their own universe, and Clint starts rubbing his fingers against his wrist, where his arm guard usually sits.  “There’s two things,” Clint closes his eyes, “We had a phase two ourselves, which I don’t think applies. Based on the Destroyer that Loki sent to kill Thor, we developed a weapon to be used against the Asgard, if we needed it. It would have powered utilizing the tesseract.”

   Jane frowns. “SHIELD had the destroyer. It’s accounted for, currently at a Stark warehouse. We’ve got certain high level…” she waves her hand, “blah blah blah, not important. We know where it is. It’s not that.”

   “But what makes me terrified is that this.” He points out towards the windows. “This bears an uncanny resemblance what the machine that brought the Chitauri did. Tore through space and then they came out. And since there’s something…someone that was pulling Loki’s strings….”

   “They could be working here as well,” Rhodey, speaking up for the first time says from the bit of wall he’s holding up. “Pulling someone else’s strings. It would explain why all these different groups, which such different goals suddenly started working together.”

   “So I take it that your aliens were not seriously hot homeless looking blondes?” Darcy’s still hunched over her tablet, not working as much, but listening to the cacophony. HYDRA must be compromised severely to go back to this frequency. “Because I could use an army of seriously hot homeless blondes. I could have used that yesterday.” Natasha shakes her head, “Well then, I think we need to know everything you do about the Chitauri.”

  
  



	14. Chapter 14

 

Bucky leans back against the backside of the couch, listening in as Natasha and Clint  debrief everyone about everything they could possibly remember about the Chitarui and the circumstances by which they fought them. They list off weak points, that they are lemmings and when you cut off their heads, unlike HYDRA, more do not take their place. And if you find the big one, destroy it. It pains him that he doesn’t know more, that during his time bought and paid for by HYDRA or any one of the organizations and syndicates working with them, that he never once asked questions. To do so would have been disloyal.

He listens to Natasha and her voice hurts through his memories. Every syllable is a reminder of what he has done without question, without guilt or hesitation. Even now, his head is a mess of orders dating back decades. He’s angry at this Natasha, doesn’t know how much they had in common. Was she the same women right up until he shot her? Did they share anything at all? They must have, because he can catch the small warmth in her that she always hid around anyone but himself, but how much of that is something he can’t comprehend.

She should have just told him. Then he wouldn’t have had to care, could have been some amnesiac and tried to make a life somewhere. But he had to know how she lived and so he tracked them down and then somehow she gave him back his memories and oh how he remembered everything. Like dying. Bucky moves the fingers on both of his hands, remembers that terrible pain, his screams and Steve’s screams.

He lets Natasha’s voice wash over him. Aliens. Like the world needed more that was fucked up in it. He closes his eyes, willing her voice into sweetness through his body. When he opens them again, it’s with his hand gathered into a fist and swinging, someone is too close in his space.  His hand is stopped still, and it’s Foster looming in his line of sight. All of the women here are fairly small, Pepper might be tall, but she’s a willow tree amongst fledgling sprouts. And Foster manages to make her delicate features intimidating.

“You have a lot to live up to,” she says and doesn’t wait for his response, but she does lower her hand, and she’s strong. Stronger than any single person ought to be. Could crush his hand, either of them, if she chose to. “You’ve been given a remarkable third chance at life. How many people get that?”

“Fewer than the amount that get a second,” James smirks defensively.

“People like us, people with abilities and skills that they never wanted, we have our own responsibilities. Doesn’t matter how we came into it, we have that burden and we’ve got to decide how we use it.” Jane nudges over a wrapped, domed object. “We are both loyal to the dead, Barnes.” She unwraps it slowly.

It’s not the shield. But it is a close thing to it.

“I found it, or rather Tony found it in a bunch of Howard Starks things. Coulson saved it, but I found it again when the Tower was finished and we were spreading out the SHIELD inventory. “ It’s not painted up like Steve’s shield at all, but he can see where it was going to be made that way, with a single blue ring and half a star. It’s one of the other prototypes. “I know it’s not….” She continues and trails off because yeah, sure it’s not Steve’s, but it could have been.

“No, it’s …better,” he drawls out, accepting the shield with just a heartbeat of hesitance. He’s used the other one before, this one is heavier, probably won’t do the same thing. “Even when we were kids, I knew he was going to be a way better man than me.”

“Everyone else looks at you like, I don’t know, really, with pity, with scorn, with remembrance.” Jane leans over to trace a line over the rim with two fingers. “I think you should make a new name for yourself. Redefine what it means to be the Winter Soldier.” She abruptly stands upright, “It’s yours. It should be at least. I don’t know what happened to Captain Roger’s actual shield, and it’s really just a second rate prototype, but something of his should go to you. Something that isn’t memorabilia.”

Second rate shield for a second rate sort of guy. It kind of works. The weight of it feels good in his arms though.

“Despite appearances, we aren’t in the business of trusting people we haven’t vetted seven ways to Tuesdays.” Jane pulls back away from the light, the shadows playing off of her features, “In fact, not all of us trust you right now. Natasha might, but the rest of us, “she waves her fingers, “you’ve got our respect, not so much our trust. But well, work with us, at least through whatever comes through the rift, and we can talk again.”

Foster leaves him there with nothing but the weight of the shield in his hands.

* * *

 

It starts as a drop. A single ship drops down into the warehouse that HYDRA is using and then, for hours, nothing happens. Darcy monitors the situation, sitting in the middle of simulation of the block, looking through the projections, walking her hands through it. Darcy’s not good with this, knowing that something big is about to happen, but having nothing she can really do to prepare.

Act. don’t react. That’s what Phil taught her. When you react, you will always be missing the point, you will always be in the position of having to follow somebody else. But there’s nothing yet to act on, at least nothing yet that won’t end in massive bloodshed for them. Nothing that she can control. So instead she sits inside of the projection and waits for the chaos to erupt.

She’s in BDU’s and her tank top, holsters already strapped on. Her guns are waiting for her, waiting for what will certainly happen and she can’t do anything about it. She breathes artificially even, trying to will herself back into readiness, but her mind just keeps getting jumbled. They haven’t stopped anything, nothing at all. Did they ever slow the bad guys down? Did they change anything? She has to keep telling herself that whatever it is, it doesn’t matter.

Whatever happens next, and whatever action she needs to take, that’s what’s important. The single heat signature in the building still mocks her, not moving, not leaving. They could be plotting how to divide up the earth for all she knows.

“You need a code name.” Clint watches her, calm and intense from a corner. She doesn’t know how long he’s been sitting there. Just, well, looking at her like she’s something far off.

“I’ve never needed one. Everyone’s always called me Lewis, if they have to refer to me formally.”

“This is probably going to be a lot different from what you are used to. You’ve been working in secret.”  His head tilts, his mouth turns up softly as if he understands the process her mind is working through. “And very well, too. Don’t doubt that. But you are going to be doing something much more open very soon. Do you want the world to know your name?”

Darcy looks down at the warehouse runs her hand through it again. She just can’t pick up the heat signature to examine it, no matter how hard she tries.  “No.” That would ruin everything they’ve accomplished. This pseudonymity they’ve maintained, with her and Jane, if they’ve been successful at all, it’s because no one can connect them back to SHIELD. Whatever happens, that’s going to change.

Darcy had grabbed a jacket, SHIELD issued, that she sometimes wears when she gets cold around the tower, and it hangs on a hook just out of her reach. She still tries to reach for it, grazing the sturdy fabric with her fingertips. Clint  chuckles and walks over and releases the jacket from the hook and it falls into her lap. “Thanks babe.” she says and shrugs it on. Clint visibly chills when she does, when she pulls her hair up. “What? What did I do?”

His cheek twitches and she’s not sure if it is a laugh or a tic, and he holds out his hand to help her up. As stupid as this all seems, this makes her feel normal. It’s not like they are ever going to call him a boyfriend, oh good lord, and she’s not girlfriend material either, but they might settle into something companionable. “You look like a proper agent. Agent Lewis of SHIELD.” He pulls her up and with a tenderness that she doesn’t deserve, his kisses her forehead. “Except hotter than most of the stuffy agents. You’re really something, you know that? Makes me wonder what you were--”

And then they watch as the heat signature expands within the warehouse bigger and bigger until it’s consuming the entire building. Darcy presses her lips together and makes for her weapons as a small trickle of heat signatures drip out of the rift and start spreading out over the New York skyline.

 

* * *

 

They don’t have alarm klaxons. Jane really thinks they should, because she’s gotten in the habit of ignoring JARVIS whenever possible. The electric shock to get her attention was way out of line and she’s going to have a talk with the AI when they get back from saving New York. If they can.

She watched Rhodes and Potts as they get in their suits when she gets to the balcony from the workshop. Rhodes always take a little bit more work than Peppers. Designed earlier, designed tougher to be removed as well. Pepper just steps in and everything tightens around her into place. RESCUE is a beautiful piece of machinery, probably Stark’s finest work. He didn’t jam-pack it with every bit of offense that he had, because Pepper would never have stood for being a weapon. War Machine did that just fine.

Barton is still shrugging on his combat gear when he and Darcy make it to the balcony, and Darcy’s holding on to his weapons, counting his arrows and biting her lip at how few there are. “Take a damn gun.” She bitches out of the corner of her mouth, “Just one, it’s backup.” And continues on that theme until Clint holsters one onto his thigh. But oh, Darcy. Darcy’s in SHIELD field gear. Not the blue skintight uniform, but the black field ops gear that offers more protection and prominently displays her allegiance. Even if she never was SHIELD, she’s their protector now.

“Oh no, no. No.” Rhodey objects when he sees  Natasha bringing Barnes up behind him. “I was overruled on those two, but they hadn’t been hired to kill us.”

“Technically, I was hired to kill the SHIELD agent in New Mexico and bring back the scientists. I hadn’t been assigned to kill any of you specifically. Also, notice how none of you are dead.” Barnes blinks. Jane looks him over and he looks younger again, more the age he appears, mid twenties rather than worn and hard. He’s got his own gun and the shield strapped to his back, his arm bared and gleaming. “I have an interest in remaining alive, same as anyone else. I can either work with you or get in your way.”

Jane turns to Rhodes, “We’re good as dead if this doesn’t work anyways, Colonel. I’ll keep him in line.” Rhodes doesn’t look happy to be overruled twice for the same thing but he also ran tactics for a living and they are already drastically outnumbered as the ships  launch terrifyingly ugly creatures. Chitarui, Natasha confirms.

“Jane,” Darcy says. Jane remembers when Darcy was just her intern, more interested in her phone than the science, and she hired her so she had someone to drive the Pinzgauer while she watched readings. “Jane, I think it’s maybe time for you to achieve godhood.”

Thor inhabited himself, Jane figures, and didn’t have to go through this ridiculous transformation every time he needed to fight. But she does and she hefts up Mjolnir and lets the light take her.  The armor builds on her, piece by tiny piece, scale by scale and chain by chain. She’s strong without it, can use the hammer without it, but this armor is truly magnificent.

When the light fades from her, she lowers Mjolnir, drops the cape. She just can’t go out with the cape, seriously. Asgard did not have Edna Mode designing their clothing.

“That’s never going to get old.” Rhodes watches and shakes his head while Darcy hands out earpieces for communication to the non-armored suit wearers, “Thoughts?”

“We need to seal off the hole.” Natasha’s cold confidence is somehow reassuring, a reminder that they have people who have been through this. “If what we’ve been monitoring is correct, it’s reached it’s peak and it’s very slowly closing. HYDRA chatter before their explosion was beginning to talk about how to accelerate it. They seemed to have a change of heart over their alliance.”

“Well, that explains why their lair has been, well, exploded,” Darcy says, “I’m setting up here as Control. Natasha and Jane, can you work together on the science?”

Jane nods: they’ll have to get to whatever’s left of the warehouse for sure. Good thing she can fly.

“The rest of us need to run interference and keep the bugs off your backs and try to manage the damage,” Rhodey confirms. “Pepper and I can keep high, Barton and Barnes? Barton, I know you’re better up high, but I want you two on the ground. We need you two with crowd control. Darce?”

“Sounds good, I’ll run the show —“ Darcy doesn’t get to finish her sentence because she’s being lifted off the ground by RESCUE when the balcony collapses below her, one of the small skiffs running into it and smashing it into pieces.

Jane, however, can fly, and grabs Natasha with her to investigate the warehouse. She hopes, hopes Rhodes grabbed the boys before they hit the ground.

“Ahh, Air Asgard, the only way to travel,” Natasha’s voice is dry and non-plussed.

“Shuddup,” Jane responds with laughter.

  
  



	15. Chapter 15

Here’s the thing about terrible, no good, panic-stricken situations. After the first initial devastating event, where everyone screams and shouts, it’s quiet. People don’t know what to do and are waiting for someone to take charge of the situation. Panic isn’t loud and it isn’t bull-roaring; it’s a whimper and a look.

There are people who think they are leaders. And sometimes they are, when everything is neat and orderly, they can inspire people to work better, smarter, or harder. But most leaders too, when faced with an alien invasion are just like everyone else, they just need a voice to follow. It’s how charismatic people with poor ideas get ahead in life. But this isn’t, for fucks sake, Darcy Lewis’s first alien encounter. It’s not the first time she’s facing being killed at any second, and she’s got a real loud voice. Control she is, and control she will.

Barnes and Barton are dropped, carefully, by Rhodes before he’s switched his trajectory to match Pepper’s and roared back into the sky to intercept anything approaching Foster and Natasha.

Darcy takes a quick look around to assess the situation. She’s not sure what street she’s landed at, can’t tell from this angle, other than they are still in Midtown. She’s been lapse on her NYC map-memorizing, but there’s still some things that need doing. From her look around, there’s about ten of the ugly-ass dudes trying to round up people on foot, a few dozen on the skiffs, and a whole bunch of property damage and panicked peoples.

“Barton, Barnes, can you keep me covered?” She says trying to keep the tinge of breathlessness out of her voice and pushing it down. She has to bring back up the part of her that she’s been trained to do into action. And that’s to keep calm, keep others safe and kick ass if needed. She’s going to do all three. “Okay, first up. I need a people check. This is Control, I need your voices.” And one by one, each member of the team gives a sitrep, even if Natasha’s is mostly wind. Her team is whole and accounted for and their agendas are clear.

She looks over at her men and nods, and they pop up from where they are crouched down and Darcy just starts running towards the mass of people, confused and conflicted as to where to go and where was safe. Two Chitauri go down near her, arrows and bullets, her own very favorite gun in her hands, and that starts her countdown. She leaps onto the hood of a car. “Okay people! Let’s get you down into the subway!” A few people start to look up at her. Darcy wills herself taller, wills herself into authority.

It just takes a couple of pebbles for an avalanche to start. And it only takes a couple of well timed shots for people to realize that the chick in the paramilitaries probably has a good idea of what to do.

*****

   Driving the suit is one of the more thrilling things Rhodes has ever done in his life, but it’s also one of the stupidest. He flies around in a tin can and shoots things, and right now, he’s alongside Pepper in her tin can, following a 5 foot 3 woman who transforms into a Norse god, and she’s carrying a supposedly-dead spy/assassin. And they are all on their way to try to plug a hole in the sky.

   This would all be funny if it were happening to somebody else. Or on television. But no, this is his life and these are the choices he’s made. Right now, his choices include deciding which of the skiffs to target. His HUD shows several dozen of the small skiffs and two larger ships dumping the aliens out into the streets.

   “Pep, you need me right now?” Those two ships don’t seem to be stopping anytime soon, and every minute there’s more Chitauri heading down into the city that the ground trio are going to have to mop up on their own. Rhodes doesn’t like that plan. It’s time for a new one.

   “Yeah, I think I can handle escort on my own,” Potts replies, blasting through a skiff through the center. It explodes in a fit, from the inside out, taking the pilot with it. The wreckage crashes through a building below, and he’s thankful he can’t hear the screams from up high. “What are thinking, Rhodey?”

   That collateral damage is bad, he thinks, but Pepper is still a little squeamish about that reality, “That I can lead the big ones off towards the water, give them a little heave-ho?”

   “I don’t think Stark Industries approves of dumping toxic waste into the ocean, Rhodey, but I think I can make a one day exception.”

   He chuckles as he twists in the armor, a quick movement to change direction towards the Chitauri. He’s not sure how to distract the ships at first but he spends a couple of moments circling in a holding pattern around one of the ships. On a whim, he makes a larger circle, now encompassing both of them, and they draw closer together as if he’s herding sheep. Partially mindless, Romanoff said earlier, that play follow-the-leader and, more importantly, follow-the-largest-most-annoying-enemy.

   Be annoying, that he can do. He fires off of ship’s haunches, the articulated hinges moving in an serpentine wave, but it stops the individual aliens from rappelling into the city. The few that are still clinging to the sides swing from their ropes as he leads them on a chase through the city, and while he doesn’t completely avoid them running into buildings, it’s more property damage as opposed to human lives.

   Buildings can be repaired, people can’t be brought back to life. If there really is a truth universally acknowledged, not that Rhodey has read that particular novel in any form since college, it’s that the dead stay dead. In the ground, and they don’t come back just because you want them too.  The dead stay dead and priorities shift because of it.

   Rhodey runs them round, almost cartoonish in the simplicity of the strategy, and then blasts himself straight up and lets the ships collide before barraging them, shooting them down. He drowns the ships and the aliens inside, far enough away from the harbor and the docks that no one else gets hurt.

*****

   “Hawkeye, are you scaling a wall?” Darcy has a voice that cuts through the wind with ease, and Clint smiles through a grunt.

   “Uh, yes?” Clint responds, “I thought that would be obvious, given that the buildings around here are a little tough to jump over, Control.” He wasn’t entirely stupid for climbing the building, after all, he has an arrow with a rope and it’s very sturdy for this sort of thing.

   There’s a pause over his earpiece where he can hear Darcy breath in an awkward sigh, and the unmistakable sound of gunshots. “I suppose the more reasonable question to be asking is, why are you scaling buildings?”

   Clint’s sure that that’s some sort of reasonable question, but it’s probably not the sort of question that has a reasonable answer. Hey, when in doubt, the truth is best right? “I happen to know that there’s a great vantage point up here. Control, I’m good on the ground, but I’m better when I have at least a little distance.”

   “Barnes, you able to keep low with me? I’m not going to have two snipers when I need ground pounders.”  Clint doesn’t have a fear of heights and when he looks down, he sees Darcy running interference with the local cops. Her lack of height is more obvious from here, but she’s running at least two conversations other than the one with him. He’s not always the best judge of character but she’s kind of perfect, really. He never really knew the other Darcy, since Jane worked out of her van most of the time, when she wasn’t ensconced in academia and never much in New York. Different worlds. But he likes this Darcy, fearless even though she’s more than a little broken. They are probably a bit too much alike, and whatever this is will implode eventually, but he’ll enjoy it for now. Assuming they get out of this fight alive.

   Barnes grants an affirmative, not very talkative, but then there’s a Chitauri falling from above him, bouncing less than a foot away from him off of the building. So okay, this might be bad. He keeps climbing until he reaches a familiar ledge. This was way easier last time when he had air support.

   “Whoever did that, you’re just great,” he says as he’s scoping out the scene, nocking an arrow and letting it loose at the last of the suckers near him, threatening his position.

   Darcy’s still arguing with someone on the ground, standing on the tips of her toes to try gain some leverage with one of New York’s finest, as she’s trying to give instructions to him. Her voice over the VOX is strangely reassuring. Rhodey breaks through for a moment, letting them know he’s breaking ranks to take out a large target. Clint’s down with less work to do.

   “Control,” he says through a smirk, prepping another arrow, “Do you need a little backup down there?” If she gives him the okay, he can time this shot right and be really, really impressive.

   “Hawkeye, do I look like I need help?” she groans, but she nods her head quickly, and he fires. The arrow, explosive tipped, finds it’s target in a skiff.

   “Boom,” escapes his lips as the skiff does what it should, bursting nicely in mid-air. But the real beauty of the shot is how the Chitauri falls off, gun falling from their hand right above where Darcy is engaging with the cop. “Catch, Control.” Darcy’s stretches out her hands and the alien gun lands perfectly in them. She’s quick to turn and fire three quick bursts at some suckers she must have been tracking.

   The cop shuts up and listens to her now.

   He’s only got so much ammunition when he’s up here, where he can’t scavenge from the dead aliens, and while he’s best with a bow he’s more than adequate with a gun. And this time, he knows where to aim.

**

   

   “Well, we can’t land on the roof,” Natasha says, and it’s hard to talk when your are flying, but Jane’s slowed down since they started approaching the  warehouse, and she can breath deep enough, get enough breath through her vocal cords to speak. “Because that would assume that there’s a roof to land on.”

   The warehouse is standing still, and relatively in one piece. Except the roof has been blown clear off, likely from the initial blast that rent the sky open, and they can look straight down into the building, clear to the ground floor.

   “Well,” Jane yells over the whirl of the hammer, “I suppose we can start at the bottom then.” She can’t dive, but the sudden drop is exhilarating and they pass through several floors of wreckage and splintered materials before landing on something solid. At this point, it only mildly resembles a floor. It used to be carpet, but it’s all been melted away to patchy plastic gunk and thatching.

   “Careful,” Natasha says in the moment before Jane sets down her full weight, “I think it will hold.” And even though she speaks softly (not a whisper, whispers carry longer than everyone thinks) she can hear her voice last longer than she’s willing to suffer.

   “Where should we look first?” Jane asks, before setting her eyes on what used to be the center of the building, “I’m going to bet right there. Check to see if any of the computers —“ she looks around as if she is realizing for the first time exactly where she is and raises her eyebrows.

   “No computers.” Natasha confirms. Anywhere that there should have been a terminal or even just a laptop has been ripped out, destroyed or melted. The heat must have been tremendous. But it’s not even warm in here now, just the same pleasant temperature as the outside. “But there’s equipment there.”

   Whatever HYDRA made this out of withstood the blast, and withstood it well. It doesn’t look like the same apparatus that Selvig had made, it’s shorter and squat. Efficiency rather than the strange beauty and elegance that Selvig’s had. But then, Loki had his hand in that, and even in rebellion he had internalized the aesthetic of Asgard. This thing, with sharp corners, is far more brutal. “I don’t suppose you see a reverse switch?” Natasha asks.

   Jane still has a grin that could light up the world, and when she uses it in combination with her determination, electrifying isn’t even the word. “No, but I bet I can make one.”

   Natasha watches in the eerie quiet, as Jane sinks in front of the machine and opens a panel and just watches the wiring with her head tilted. There’s no living thing here besides the two of them; they’ve made enough noise for anyone still able to move to find them, and when she looks up, she can only see the horrible scar in the sky.

   “The previous time, the portal stayed open only as long as it was being powered by the beam.” Natasha is not a person of science, but she is a smart woman,  this situation is very different from the one they had before. They are on their own, no backup or voice from the helicarrier in her ear.

   “Mmmm, this one was trying to do that, but the power overloaded and burned out the circuits.” Jane removes the casing of the object completely to find the Tesseract glowing brightly in the center. “I bet if we actually measured the hole, we’d find it was very slowly shrinking and at some point after it finishes feeding off of itself, it will just collapse.”

   “So we just need,” Natasha smiles with a flash of teeth, “to find a way to drain the energy.”

 

*****

 

   There's no time for a break in between escorting Jane and guarding them, but energy constraints dictated that Pepper spend a little time on the ground. RESCUE isn't supposed to be used for long, sustained flights. If anything, she's meant to be, in Tony's vocabulary, flirty. Able to get in places where other suits can't or couldn’t. They didn’t keep the other suits, JARVIS had helped them take them down for parts or study. Every day, a little less of Tony in the world. But everyday, RESCUE was a little bit more brilliant, even with her foibles and limitations, and everyday was a new chance to build her own legacy.

   Personally, Pepper would just like to live through today. She has meetings tomorrow that don’t involve her armor, but a different sort of power suit.

   There’s no people here, none at all on the streets at least, which means pretty much anything that moves is either a Chitauri on the ground or over her head, and she fights the few that are stationed around this side of the building. They are, however, certainly standing watch. It seems that Chitauri have a blind spot that is very similar to humans, they don’t look up, and they don’t see Jane and Natasha go through the roof to get inside.  A blessing.

   The Chitauri are linked though, and her attacks on the guards set out the alarm and there’s a veritable stampede heading straight for her. A dozen, at least, and everywhere Pepper looks, there’s yet another reason why she was really meant for the boardroom.  These things don’t go down with one shot; they can’t be manipulated, appealed or reasoned with, they just attack.

   “War Machine,”  her bravery doesn’t weaken with something a mere as overwhelming odds. She’s Pepper Potts, she’s a force to be reckoned with on her own, “How’s about heading back? I could use a little air support.”

   “Roger that, RESCUE. Control, I’m heading back to guard position.” Rhodey responds. Darcy’s breathy when she confirms his plan.

   Pepper flies up, there’s no shame in a strategic retreat, particularly when it isn’t really one. She picks off the farthest of the Chitauri, firing her repulsors and some good old-fashioned hand to hand. A rash of bullets swarm the Chitauri and as they hit their target, War Machine hovers beside her. “Man, Potts, you sure know how to plan a party. Look at these folks wanting to dance.”

   Pepper barks out a laugh so inelegant that it’s hardly even her vision of herself, “Would you like first pick, Rhodes?”

   The continue on together, even when it’s overwhelming, because if she doesn’t make it through the day, she’s going out in the service of the world.

 

***

   When you have to push back into your head, everything that’s really you and it competes with the things you have done, that are also you, it actually causes physical pain. Or maybe that’s what it feels like when you don’t have programming jammed into your head and your body iced when it’s no longer needed. Maybe that’s just what anger feels like when it coils inside the roots of your body. There’s a lot of possibilities for what this sensation that doesn’t fade inside of Bucky, but he doesn’t actually mind them.

   If he can feel pain, then he’s still got feelings. He lines up with his sight - he doesn’t have the preternatural aim that Barton seems to have. Barton doesn’t even look half the time, just trusts that the patterns he tracks have continued. But no, Bucky’s talented, exceptionally so, but he still has to aim and all it feels like is that he’s just killing time until the inevitable happens.

   “Hey, if y’all get your hands on their guns, they are amazing.” Lewis mugs over his ear piece before there’s a scuffle and her sharp inhale and gasp.

   “Lewis, you still with us?” He says at the same time he watches Barton literally take a running leap off a building, twisting and firing an arrow that burrows into the side of the building.

   “So, I can say with great gusto that being knifed hurts an entire metric ass ton more than getting shot,” Darcy groans. “I’m fine. Fuckers just have claws. Hawkeye — no, I don’t need you to….Fine okay, whatever, hang out with me. I’m the one with the sweet ass gun.”

   His tactician’s eye watches the spot where Darcy is catching her breath behind a car, face bloody and rips in her combat gear.  She’s got the look of well-worn hidden pain, and he keeps that area clear while Barton makes his way closer to her.

   They trust each other.  Even in the little time that he’s figured out that this Barton and Natasha have been here, they’ve found their way into this collective.  Bucky is kneeling on the shield that Foster had given him. It’s nothing like Steve’s. It’s heavier, it’s less finished and it doesn’t shine, but it’s like a beacon nonetheless. He kneels over it and it keeps him steady as he aims and picks his shots.

   Foster says he’s got to earn their trust. Are these the people he wants to put his own trust in, though? He listens to the com chatter, Foster and Natasha checking in, the suits almost gleeful in their counting, and he can damn watch Hawkeye and Lewis as she puts herself back together and gets the steel in her eyes.

   And it’s all so similar, he’s almost got to laugh. They are in fucking alleyways refusing to back down, and constantly getting back up. Bucky’s been here before, that’s for sure.  Things don’t look good for any of them, and they are still getting back up to fight. The part of him that’s the Winter Soldier says to draw back and let them get killed, and he’s going to bury that damn voice. He’s Bucky Barnes and has always favored the brave and overwhelming odds. He can earn their trust, and more importantly, he has already earned the right to watch their backs.

 

***

 

   Jane takes off and throws her earpiece across the room and to her credit, Natasha doesn’t even go to grab it. “I can’t finish this with them jabbering at me.” It’s not really the talking, if she had to be honest. It’s also the increasingly shallow breaths that Darcy is making while she fights. Jane doesn’t have all the tools she needs to do and if her focus drifts to how much longer her friends can stand on their feet, this isn’t going to work.

   “How long?” She asks Natasha. “How long have I been working on this?”

   “Over an hour since we landed,” Natasha says before they both hear heavy footsteps and an inhuman yell. Her voice is steady. “They’ve started to break through. Whatever it is you have planned, I think you need to —“

   Natasha is interrupted by the need to shoot a Chitauri at the edge of her vision and Jane gets back to whatever it is she can do. She thinks she has it, and putting the mechanism in reverse is probably the closest thing she can articulate what she has done. And even that feels a little ridiculous. She’s a particle physicist not an engineer, but a year of being a mechanic has given her a grounding that she can’t deny.  If this works, it might be time for another doctorate.

   “I think I’m going to try this!” Jane throws a look at Natasha, trying to get across stand back, because she can’t seem to vocalize unneeded words right now. With her work in place, it’s just pulling a lever. The machine whirls and rumbles, connects with the Tesseract for power and another beam of light emerges. Instead of the clear blue before, it’s an almost sickening green, and thicker, and it ambles its way up, so much slower than she expects, and it stops not long after it clears the rooftop. Jane and Natasha have to dodge falling debris.

   “I’m going to have to get closer,” Jane decides almost as an afterthought, because this has to work, and she has to do everything in her power to make it work. The machine isn’t that big, she decides, and she could condense it enough that she could carry it in one hand.

   It’s lighter than she thinks, and she wonders if that's more because of her new found strength or because of the actual materials. Doesn’t matter, of course, and she picks up Mjolnir  and starts building up the momentum needed to carry her straight up. The wind rushes against her face and doesn’t look down until she’s halfway to the rift, and can just barely make out Natasha’s face and nothing of her expression.

   She flies up until the beam of energy makes contact with the rift and she has to steady herself against the backlash. The edges of the rift crackle and waver with the influx of the strange energy until they start to knit back together. It’s slow at first and she’s nearly sobbing with the effort. It’s over, it’s almost over, and the repair picks up speed, until the rift is just a ribbon and then just a scar, a horrid green against a beautiful blue sky.

   She hovers there, watching as a couple of the larger skiffs drop and fall to the ground. “Must have severed a connection,” she muses, and she goes to talk to the  rest, but remembers that she threw her earpiece off already. The machine suddenly grows hot in her hand and the beam cuts out.  Jane can’t hold onto it much longer, but she can’t lose the Tesseract, and juggles it under her arm so she can rip into it and pull the cube out, dropping the rest and it explodes, knocking her around with the shockwave.

   Jane is falling. She can’t feel or reach for her hammer, and she can’t seem to muster it back to her grasp. The cape would have looked impressive, she thinks, as she falls and it’s growing very dark inside of her head.

***

“You lived up to your name again, RESCUE.” Darcy says between shuddering gasps, “I think I might need some help here. Probably an IV, a transfusion, maybe?” Darcy keeps herself propped up between Barnes and Barton. Everyone’s banged up, but she’s apparently the squishiest of all the them, getting the brunt of the attack it seems. But she can’t stop looking at Jane, holding her head and looking at the devastation with a stunned face.

   “Are they all dead?” Jane says, closing her eyes.

   “Yes,” Rhodey answers, his faceplate up, and so is Pepper’s, “Police are evacuating the buildings, getting everyone out so they can start cleaning them out.”

   “And us?” Natasha crosses her arms over her chest, “Where are we going?”

   Barton looks over at her, “I don’t think we are getting schwarma this time. We’re going to catch our breath and find someplace to get patched up, and try to get out of here before —“

   Several cell phone shutters go off, and there’s a small crowd of people crowding against the police barrier. They name off RESCUE and War Machine, easy words off their lips. They’ve been in the papers dozens of times, but there’s questions ringing out about the rest of them.

   If this were two years ago, if Coulson were still here, there’d be swarms of black-suited agents getting the lookie-loos out of here. They wouldn’t let them ask questions at all. But he’s not, and while she hurts, and she’s bleeding, this is what Darcy does now.

   “Dude, is that a Captain America shield?” a teenager, his face covered in plaster, asks. “No, really, I’m asking. Is it? ”

   Bucky looks over at the barrier, his face unreadable but soft, sweat soaked.  “No, no it’s not. Captain America was a good man, I wouldn’t try to take his place. I couldn’t, no one can.”

   “Who are you guys anyways?”

   We should go, she thinks, now that the fights over there’s other people that have work to do. There’s so much to do in this city now. They can’t hold up the evacuation process because they don’t really want to move yet. The crowd keeps calling out names and descriptions of them, but more and more, they just want to know who they are. None of them have been hiding their faces from the cameras or the video. It’s too late for them to try to be quiet, try to live their strange lives in the shadows anymore.

   “Clint,” she says quietly, shifting so there’s even more weight on him. She likes how solid he feels, and warm, “What did you guys call yourselves?”

   Avengers. It’s as good a name as any.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really have to thank a few people: weoffendedshadows for betaing this for WEEKS now, and doing such a quick and fantastic job of it. He's really one of the best people I know, and deserves way more than 12 percent of the credit here.  
> Also to someassemblingrequired, who as usual, got the story 500 words at a time, all of my whining, all of my "WHY CAN'T I FUCKING WRITE RHODEY". She helped me with plotting and motivations and in return I gave her feels.  
> To every single person that I ever bugged over email with my bitching, I love you all. Every person that commented week after week? Y'all are amazing.
> 
> The initial idea for this story was to tell about a world where the Avengers never happened. It was going to be a one-week wonder story, and include heroes from all around the Marvel universe. And then it snowballed and changed, for the better maybe, into a story about the side characters, those without huge merchandising, and those left behind being the ones to have to come together to form the Avengers and fight against overwhelming odds. 
> 
> Thank you very much for reading. I'll be happy to answer questions about the universe either in the comments, or at my tumblr, [ twistedingenue](http://www.twistedingenue.tumblr.com)

**Author's Note:**

> Think of this not as a WIP, but an at-least weekly serial. It just works better that way. I'll be adding relevant tags as needed.
> 
> Big thanks to my beta [ weoffendedshadows](http://archiveofourown.org/users/WeOffendedShadows), [puffabilly](http://archiveofourown.org/users/puffabilly) for the spectacular cover art, and my typical cast of cheerleaders.
> 
> Teasers, updates, ramblings and the like can be found at [ my tumblr](http://www.twistedingenue.tumblr.com)


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